Handi-CAPEable

Why Do Superhero Fans Fear Drama?

2012-01-26T17:59:00.000-08:00

I've been simmering on this topic for a long time, but a recent video by Linkara (15 Things Wrong With Identity Crisis) took this frustration to a boiling point. The video itself wasn't so bad, as while I disagreed with Linkara on several points, I respect the thought and effort he puts into his critiques. What really bugged me was (with some exceptions) the circle jerk of fan reactions that followed, which tended to coalesce on the same theme; " Dark is bad, make superhero comics fun again", followed by the usual whining and crying about the state of modern comics.

Far be it for me to defend Identity Crisis, as I didn't like the book myself for several reasons covered in Linkara's review (most notably the rape). But the reasons people don't like it seem to revolve around the fact that certain characters were killed off and removed from the status quo, and certain characters were changed. The moaning is often associated with the loss of more light-hearted incarnations of the characters, such as Tim Drake when his dad was alive, or Ralph and Sue Dibny as a couple. This then goes into whining and crying about a lot of post-Identity Crisis comics like Countdown and Cry for Justice, using Brad Meltzer as the scapegoat for these comics (despite the fact that he didn't write them). Occasionally someone will try to say that dark isn't necessarily bad, but they'll follow it with a "but it doesn't make a story good", then point to examples of where a story is good without being dark. And you'll often see citations of the All Ages titles as examples of how to do these characters right, the titles that are meant for very young children and tend not to have much development or moral complexity.

If dark just means gratuitous, then I'm more sympathetic to this perspective. However, the critiques aren't just with the gore (which I agree is off-putting in most modern DC comics), but with the notion that these bad things happen. The cry is for "fun", and by "fun", they mean a specific status quo, a specific story structure (usually single issues with a happy resolution at the end), and a specific interpretation of characters. "Fun" is what they know and what they're comfortable with; the complaints tend not to come from people trying to broaden their horizons and challenge their expectations.

In one sense, I'm trying to show that it cuts both ways, this battle of light vs. dark. If stories can be told without mature content, they can also be told with mature content. If some superhero creators are obsessed with making the characters grow up with them, others perseverate over keeping them at the idealized status quo. But ultimately, the dark stories-- or, more precisely, the stories with substantial drama and risk for the characters-- are the ones that really succeed. The greatest stories for each character, the ones that are part of their canon, are the ones that really pushed them-- Frank Miller's run for Daredevil, Chris Claremont's run on the X-Men, etc. Without struggle the hero cannot show his or her heroism; if it's just a fight of the week, the ending is never in doubt, and there's no reason to care, other than as a brief escape from reality. Of course, these stories were printed before the internet, so their reputations escaped the constant bitching of fans with computers.

Unfortunately, a lot of superhero fandom seems to cling to the escape hatch, to hide from reality within their Silver Agey security bubble. Even creators will end up pandering to them, including creators like Darwyn Cooke and Greg Rucka who have done excellent dark stuff in the genre. But they still get on the "fun" bandwagon, as if disavowing their work in order to capture for themselves this pleasant navel-gazing. The meaning possible for the superhero is thus pissed away, leaving the result as a pleasant but unattainable ideal rather than a figure whose struggles inspire people to attain the ideals in their own lives.

In the end, while I still don't like Identity Crisis, I find it more favorable based on the fact that it prodded at people who need prodding out of their bubble. If people suffer so much from drama and tragedy in superhero comics, either their lives are very good and their only real problems are with their fiction, or they put a disproportionate need upon fiction as a coping mechanism. Fun is part of life; it is not all of life.

Batgirl, The Most Repulsive Comic of 2011

2012-01-01T18:03:00.000-08:00

At the end of 2011, the new Batgirl has completed its first arc, and while it's not too bad from a craft standpoint, the implications are so disgusting that it was easily the worst comic I read all year. That includes plenty of comics that WERE bad from a craft standpoint, and even more comics that had a decent level of craft but were based on profoundly stupid concepts. But none of these comics had as revolting a message behind them, and even if they did, their negative implications were immediately seized upon by the audience. The new Batgirl is vile, but a positive commercial and critical reception enable its vileness.

Again, the issue here isn't with the art or writing, at least no more so than any other comic. Adrian Syaf's art is exceptional, and he at least makes the book nice to look at. And Gail Simone's script is decently constructed, if not nearly as good as her work on Birds of Prey or Secret Six. But she's based the book around one of the worst representations of disability I've seen in recent years. This is a comic that deals explicitly with the fact that the character of Barbara Gordon was the rare character who was both a semiotic victory and a memorable, complex entity on her own-- then pisses all over it.

I've already mentioned the bullshit conceit behind this book, that Barbara Gordon can walk again and is using that opportunity to be Batgirl. Now that we're a full four-issue story arc into this comic, we learn how Barbara was cured; she went to a special clinic in South Africa, to receive an experimental surgery. There's the chance that her condition could deteriorate, especially with intense physical strain (the kind that comes part and parcel with crime-fighting), but she's doing it anyway. In Barbara's mind, she's received a miracle, and she has to use her second chance to help people.

It's a strong religious metaphor without the courage to attach itself to a specific religion. But worse, it's a miracle cure that reinforces the notion that Barbara was broken because she couldn't walk. It doesn't matter that it's from the fringes of real-world science instead of DC Universe Phlebotnium, it's still an awful plot device. Barbara can walk again, so she's using this chance to become the exact same person she was before being put in the wheelchair. Her time as Oracle is completely glossed over, with the only bit of past continuity explicitly referenced being when she was shot by the Joker.

Worse yet, the book has the gall to try to treat disability with respect. Barbara scoffs at how Alysia* talks about the loss of mobility as a pitiful fate, and talks about what the chair "lets you do". It's referenced that the word "cure" was a dirty word in the Gordon household, with her father having brought up the clinic with veiled language (so as not to offend Barbara's proud identity). But this means absolutely nothing because Barbara still took the cure, and still enjoys not only her life as an able-bodied person, but as a pinnacle of athletic skill.

Some might argue that it's Barbara's choice to take this cure, and to live the kind of life she wants without accepting limitations. Except Barbara doesn't have much respect for her own life, for the following reasons;

1.) Subjecting herself to an experimental and possible life-threatening surgery in order to walk again, as though the risk of being dead was worth the reward of being able to walk.

2.) Becoming a crimefighter despite being badly out of practice and physically/psychologically unfit for the task. Throwing herself onto the battlefield in situations that could (and, in fact, did) cost civilians their lives due to her incompetence.

3.) Refusing help from her ex-boyfriend and fellow Bat-sidekick Dick Grayson, brushing him off as an over-protective man and going off to fight the villain herself. (This isn't a feminist issue, it's an issue of someone close Barbara not wanting her to get herself killed out of stupid pride).

4.) Being yet another member of the Bat-Family, now in a role that hundreds of crimefighters do better (thanks to Batman, Incorporated). Grant Morrison's notion of Oracle as a cyber-crimefighting digital Batgirl was silly and rooted in very dated conceptions of the internet, but it at least gave Barbara a unique role suited to her skill-set. Here she's just one of the Bat-Grunts, albeit without the ability to handle her emotional baggage.

In short, the message of the new Batgirl is that being disabled limits what you can do, being "normal" is an ideal for which you should readily throw away your life, and disability is just a pit-stop on the able-bodied hero's journey. To this, I use the words of a still-active disabled character, played by an extremely talented actor with a disability (Peter Dinklage);

" [as a cripple] I beg to differ. Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities. "-- Tyrion Lannister, George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones

*the Ethnic Best Friend, because DC's books still have to belong to the white characters; so long, Cassandra Cain!

Matt Fraction And Nathan Fox Give Bin Laden A Taste Of Fear Itself

2011-12-08T18:12:00.000-08:00

Go Here For The Story

Yesterday gave comics a surprising boost of notoriety when GQ published a comic strip version of Bin Laden's final moments. The comic was written by Matt Fraction, one of my favorite comic writers, while the art is by comic artist Nathan Fox. The two previously collaborated on Invincible Iron Man 500, where Fox illustrated the parts of Fraction's dystopian future where we saw Tony's son turned into a literal War Machine, under the control of the Mandarin.

This story is an extremely intense piece of comic storytelling, and effectively chronicles the Seals' raid on Bin Laden's final hiding place. What's most interesting about it isn't the portrayal of the Seals, but of Bin Laden himself. Here, the mastermind behind Al Qaeda is almost a sympathetic figure. He's the most infamous mass-murderer of the current century, his organization responsible for the deaths of thousands including both American and European citizens as well as his "fellow" Muslims. But in his final moments, he's just a sick, scared old man who's been hiding in the dark for years, thinking in clipped, frantic captions as he awaits the inevitable.

In the annotations, Fraction denies that he wanted to get into Bin Laden's head, for obvious reasons; what person, of any respectable political affiliation, would try to excuse this monster's actions? But Fraction isn't excusing anything Bin Laden did. If anything, he and Nathan Fox are using their chosen medium to make Bin Laden the concept see the errors of his ways. In the end, Bin Laden only brought misery to the world, and that includes his own kin. The look Fox put on Osama's face as one of his grown sons runs out to protect him and ends up dead says a lot; is Osama simply scared, or is there a hint of remorse for the fact that his child died for his own sins?

Some may interpret this as propaganda for the US, but it's really a great piece of storytelling that combats the ideals for which Bin Laden caused so many deaths. Bin Laden may have wanted to be a martyr who inspired an even greater wave of suicide bombings. But if Fraction and Fox's comic is his legacy, then everything Bin Laden did just led him to an undignified, pathetic end.

Read My Review, Then Buy This Game

2011-11-14T15:42:00.000-08:00

Published by the fine folks at GameDynamo.com

I'm sorry I've neglected this blog, though between my new real world job, my online game writing job, and my work on Ruby Nation, you can probably see why. Still, it's easy enough to link to my review of the collected glory that is the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection.

The Jeph Loeb Drinking Game

2011-10-10T16:42:00.000-07:00

Note: Do not try this at home. This Avengers: X-Sanction preview alone will get you completely plastered.

--When a fight scene erupts for no clear reason other than to have a fight scene, take a shot. (Avengers vs. Lethal Legion)

--When a bunch of heroes or villains are assembled in an "iconic" arrangement, take a shot. (The Avengers are Marvel's Big Five-- Wolverine, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk by way of the Red Hulk-- joined by the Falcon, presumably as a token. The Lethal Legion are veteran Avengers foes Living Laser, Grim Reaper, Whirlwind, and Radioactive Man. The latter of which hasn't been a conventional super-villain in a long time, instead acting as a loyal soldier for China).

--When a character makes a quip with the same amount of wit as a schoolyard taunt, take a shot. (Spider-Man: "Why is there never a jailbreak on nice, pleasant, warm nights in New York?" Wolverine: "Why is it you never shut up?")

--When a character goes into heavy-handed, mopey first-person caption narration, take a shot. (Cable's internal monologue about being a soldier).

--When the conflicts are revealed to be the acts of an ubermensch villain manipulating events with far more capability than they should be able to have, take a shot. (Not seen here, but with Loeb's history of using villains like Hush, Romulus, Ultimate Doctor Doom, The Intelligencia, and others, there's often a mastermind with unconvincingly extreme mastery).

--When a character is brought back to an "iconic" state in a way that defies everything previously established, take a shot. (This series is about bringing Cable back from the dead. Even though his absence wasn't exactly derailing the Marvel Universe.)

Now excuse me as I go into the ER for alcohol poisoning.

Ruby Nation Begins! Stuff You May Have Missed

2011-10-06T21:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I've finished the prologue of my new webcomic, 13 pages total. It's complete with a new domain name, at therubynation.com . Similar to its predecessor, chapters will be followed by text pieces, so the next few weeks will see the start of the "Ruby in Therapy" interview series.

I designed the prologue to start the series with a bang, to go with an action sequence so readers immediately want to find out what's happening. If you don't understand the entire story and didn't read Ruby's World,, it'll reveal itself That said, there are some things that aren't immediately apparent from the pages, so I'll offer these useful notes;

1.) The characters wear superhero costumes now-- kind of. Ruby's dressed similarly to usual, but wearing a utility belt with the Ruby Nation Insignia on the buckle, while Jiro has a spy catsuit with a ninja scarf and combat webbing. These are designed more as custom military uniforms than superhero costumes, as I honestly hate spandex-- it's too often used as simply flat colors with no texture, rendering superheroes as nudes in body paint. Here it's more like stylized body armor, adding a bit of self-conscious fashion and accessorizing(since these are teenaged characters, looking cool is important to them, and is one of the few things they have left).

Think the paramilitary superhero look of the Ultimates and Metal Gear Solid, mixed with the individualized bling of Tetsuya Nomura (designer for Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts).

2.) The post-human antagonist her is named Moray. The name comes from the moray eel, a type of serpentine-looking fish with strong jaws and sharp teeth. I absolutely love animal motifs for superhuman characters, especially more obscure animals. Since Moray's ability involves columns of nanofilament bursting from his hands and enveloping/shredding everything they catch, it seems appropriate. As for more about him and his origins...you'll have to wait and see.

3.) There will be new characters on Ruby's side, as well. One of the strongest themes of the Ruby Saga is the challenge of maintaining one's ideals in a fallen world, to be optimistic despite all evidence to the contrary. The prologue sets up the inherent fatalism of the world, where there are no options for the characters that don't involve someone dying and someone grieving. This will be further examined in the coming chapters, because while it may be the way things are, is it necessarily the way things have to be?

5 Ways to Magically Cure a Disabled Character, Part 1: Conspicuous Assistive Technology

2011-09-15T15:06:00.000-07:00

In the comments section of my Batgirl review, it was asked why Barbara never used the DC Universe's supertech or magic to fix her spine. This is a question that comes up often around this issue, and is valid. Granted, it's a slippery slope towards removing any sense of dramatic urgency from the world, when you can just Phlebotnium any infirmity away, but it stretches disbelief a bit too far when characters bemoan their tragedies but don't go for the genre solutions right in front of them.

Of course, as another comment noted, supernatural injuries would be treated by supernatural medicines, and every medicine has its side-effects. So I'm doing this series of blogs to examine the ways in which these magic cures can be used to further the story and explore issues of disability, rather than simply swipe them under the rug and pretend they don't exist.

NUMBER FIVE: THE CURE IS DEFORMING (I.E. CYBORG PARTS)

This might stretch disbelief as well, because if the universe has technology sophisticated enough to replace a lost limb with a superhumanly strong prosthesis, it could go just a little further and replace it with one that looks human as well. However, it's a good symbolic way to show that even though the character has regained their mobility, they remain affected by the experience. It also makes the notion of "fixing" a disability less appealing, because disability is a social construct. This is a reason given for why Barbara Gordon never asked her pals in the Justice League to make her a walking exoskeleton; a wheelchair is hardly as conspicuous as a clunky robot suit that gives the wearer enough strength to crush a man like a paper cup.

BEST EXAMPLE: Cyborg of the Teen Titans. Victor Stone's life was saved from a life-threatening injury by replacing most of his body with metal parts. However, Vic wasn't very happy about this, and the fact that his father did the operation further intensified his daddy issues. He was kicked off of his high school football team, was abandoned by his girlfriend, and basically got cut off from society. It wasn't until he met the Teen Titans that he found a purpose to live again, fighting alongside other outsiders, saving lives, and taking out his anger on people who had it coming. But he was still mostly robotic, his human parts limited to half his face and bits of his torso.

What's also worth noting is that even though Victor's new body let him be a superhero, it also had a spectacular downside; it ruined his ability to be an athlete. When Vic was human, he loved football, and trained intensively so he could get stronger and stronger. But his cyborg body was not only superhumanly strong, but limits were built into his mechanical muscles. Several stories touched on the fact that he didn't like how he was robbed of the ability to improve himself with exercise. An episode of the cartoon even had this as the central conflict (though it ended with Cyborg beating the villain through the power of determination, presumably because his meaty bits gave him a boost of strength....somehow).

Other Sci-Fi/Fantasy Examples:

Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 4; The much-loathed replacement Snake from MGS2 got a major upgrade in MGS4, becoming a Cyborg Ninja. But he looked even less human than any of the other cyborgs, with claw-like hands, cloven feet, and the lower half of his head replaced by metal. At the ending he gets his combat limbs replaced with more realistic prostheses, but you can see all the seams. Raiden's most human appearance since his cyborganization still makes him look like a Ken doll.

Robotman from Doom Patrol: Poor Cliff Steele is an even greater extreme of the "disfiguring prostheses" trope; he's a brain in a jar, attached to a robotic body. Not only is he treated as a freak (even despite his heroic exploits; the Doom Patrol are some of the most Marvel-like characters in DC), but the amount of everyday human sensations that he's lost is profound. Cliff's described his predicament as phantom pain for his entire body.

Barret from Final Fantasy VII: The JRPG analogue to Mr. T lost his hand when being shot at by Shinra goons, the same goons who destroyed his hometown and killed his wife. The replacement for his hand was a huge cannon he used in vengeance. This is an odd version because Barret intentionally chose an intimidating weapon instead of a prosthetic hand, not caring about much beyond killing all of Shinra. In the Advent Children animated movie, he mellows out and gets a regular prosthetic, a metal hand that's conspicuous but actually functions like the original limb.

And again, you could just invent perfect replacements, but if it's a perfect transition, where's the story? An amputee might be pitied, but a cyborg is more likely to be feared and hated. It's a good metaphor for the way the experience of such trauma changes a person; once it's there, you can't be the same person you were, and others will pick on that.

Newsarama on Batgirl: Excerpts from Yours Truly!

2011-09-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Vaneta Rogers of Newsarama regarding the Batgirl fiasco. I have hardly been quiet about this series of unfortunate events, but I was honored by the request. Vaneta's piece is up, which also includes quotes from Denny O'Neil, John Ostrander, and Professor James B. South.

It is a high honor to be quoted alongside these industry legends. :)

New 52 Batgirl #1 Review: Wasn't That Paralysis Just A Hassle?

2011-09-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

The new Batgirl comic is finally out, and it's simultaneously not as repellent as I expected, yet still inherently repellent.

In all fairness, the story is still unfolding, and it's well-told. I'm not objecting to the abilities of Gail Simone as a writer or Adrian Syaf as an artist. It's the fact that the team involved is so talented that makes this book so galling. They should be able to do something better, and avoid the pitfalls.

Because at this point, it looks like the new Barbara Gordon was still shot in the spine, but got better. She says that she was in a wheelchair for three years after the Joker attacked her, but then " a miracle" happened. We don't hear what that miracle is, and I imagine we'll find out. But I don't see how it could be anything more than a quick Phlebotnium fix. The way Barbara's narration frames the miracle, it sounds like she spent the three years without her mobility just sitting on her ass moping in a dark room, but then she found this cure and she's back in the game.

Credit should be given to Simone for at least making Barbara's "recovery" believable, in that she's not recovered from the psychological aspect. She still knows what it's like to have been in a wheelchair, and finds herself bothered by ablist remarks people make without thinking ( such as the whole "being in a chair is worse than death" bullshit). She still has nightmares about the shooting, and she's very nervous on the battlefield after the incident. The cliffhanger even has Barbara freeze up and fail to save someone thanks to a PTSD flashback from a criminal pointing a gun at her just the way the Joker did.

However, the fact remains that Barbara can walk now, and she's used that opportunity to go back to being a more famous character's distaff counterpart. The theory that she wouldn't be able to walk without her new armored costume is debunked by the images of Barbara walking around in her civvies. Perhaps the costume helps her with mobility, since her legs would've atrophied in the three years of paralysis. It could be similar to Old Snake's Octocamo suit in Metal Gear Solid 4, adding a slight boost in strength to help with her impairments but not actually making her superhuman. Of course, wacky textures on costumes are everywhere in the rebooted DCU, so it might just be Barbara jumping on this "HR Giger meets Victoria's Secret"* bandwagon.

The disability aspect is present, but it's a past-tense motivator, a handicap used to make her able-bodied self look stronger. But the things Barbara accomplished as Oracle, without leaving her chair, were much more impressive and meaningful. The comic is interesting enough and well-written enough that I'm going to keep reading it for the time being, but I sincerely hope the representation of disability goes beyond "Origin Story Tragedy". It's a deeper handling than most writers would attempt, but it's not enough to compensate for the semiotic ableism inherent in "fixing" Barbara Gordon.

* A description I saw in a ComicsAlliance comments thread, which seems especially apt when looking at the new Batgirl.

Ruby Nation: New Webcomic, Same Great Continuity!

2011-08-28T19:19:00.000-07:00

After several moons' absence, the story that began in Ruby's World finally returns. Ruby Nation picks up three months after the end of World, with Ruby and her team actively working to build their super-soldier refugee state while having to maintain their morals in light of the circumstances (and what they'll be forced to do)

If you didn't read Ruby's World, you can do so any time you like, but you don't have to. The purpose of this "reboot" was as a jumping-on point for new readers. The prologue hits the ground running, but all the details should become apparent in the coming weeks for those just coming to the party. As a longtime reader of superhero comics, I'm aware both of the richness that an established history can bring, and the downsides that come with its misuse. When the history becomes too prominent, it keeps new readers from being able to understand what they're seeing. And even if the continuity is explained, it's like being told about a great story secondhand, rather than actually seeing the story. I'd rather not subject people to my personal nostalgia (except for the Halloween cosplay sketches).

There is a middle ground between having a past and being enslaved by it, however. Many of the greatest series I've read/seen/played have clearly defined backstories. The X-Men didn't become popular until the International team debuted in the 70's, keeping parts of the original iteration but forging a new path. Buffy, the greatest fantasy show ever, was based on the backstory of an utterly terrible movie attempt. And Metal Gear Solid's postmodern mastery has its roots in the plain old Metal Gear games for the MSX, before the series had extensive cutscenes, horribly tragic fates, and homoerotic subtext bordering on actual text. Wether intentional or not, it seems like all these series had a rough start that nevertheless allowed them to grow and change into something great. Stories, as well as their storytellers, have to learn by doing.

TLDR; Ruby Nation will be to Ruby's World what Metal Gear Solid is to MSX Metal Gear.

Anyway, I'll be delivering more of these musings as the series progresses, as the simple act of creating a piece of art and putting it out there is an act of ego, so I might as well take it further and show you my process as well.

Batman 80 Page Giant: Batman Fights Autism, Strikes Blow For Sentimentality

2011-08-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

The recent Batman: 80 Page Giant makes the unlikely intersection between Batman and autism. In the story written by Joe Caramagna, a nonverbal autistic boy is reading a Batman comic when his mother takes the book away from him. She's bitching about how he can't differentiate between fantasy and reality (apparently unable to get her stereotypes straight, as most of these morons say that autistic people are too literal to be imaginative), while his father talks about how comics are just harmless fun. After getting upset by the bickering, the boy looks out the window, and either has a fantasy that he sees Batman and Solomon Grundy fighting, or actually witnesses Batman and Grundy duking it out. But in the end, this enables the nine-year-old to say his first word, to the delight of both his parents; "Batman".

The story is slightly better than most fictional representations of autism, in that the autistic by is the actual protagonist instead of a plot device to make his parents sympathetic, and the "warrior mother" stereotype is as much a pompous blowhard as a tireless champion for her child's development. The story isn't exactly deep, but given how it's a back-up strip in an anthology magazine, we can't expect too much. On the other hand, this is the only place where we'd see the autism "issue" in a Batman comic, and it's used in a revoltingly sentimental fashion, right down to the "everything's going to be okay" ending. And if the kid can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality, he's got problems that are far more debilitating than the autism spectrum-- it's Sucker Punch all over again..

But the problems with the book are severely exacerbated when you take This Article into account, in which Caramagna tells his local newspaper about his creative process. I'm sure that Caramagna is well-intentioned, but those intentions are expressed in a very condescending manner towards autistic people. Because autism is such a horrible fate, the language surrounding it tends to focus on treating (if not outright curing/erasing) the disorder. In fact, Caramanga talks about how he designed the story to potentially "unlock their imagination"

I wanted to tell a story where comics can make a difference in someone’s life and get their creative juices going. I don’t want to make it sound like if you give a kid a comic, he’ll be cured. But I think they can be used as part of a creative therapy or artistic therapy. With autism, no one knows what might be the thing that unlocks their imagination.

I totally agree that a Batman comic can unlock a child's imagination. Because it's BATMAN. He's already a character with near-universal appeal, evidenced by the fact that he maintains a transmedia presence stronger than pretty much any other comic hero, and has his backstory etched in the public imagination. Using him as an autistic kid's fantasy/delusion isn't going to stir those creative juices any better than a straightforward Batman story. In fact, it's probably going to be less effective, because A.) people who buy Batman would likely rather read about Batman than a "special needs" sob story stereotype, and B.) the autistic character might outright offend some of us on the spectrum.

Aside from that one comment, Caramagna doesn't say anything too infuriating. Most of the problem is the way the interview frames the comic, as "fighting autism". Of course, these articles never see autism as part of an autistic person, the neurological identity that shapes them into who they are (albeit with a lot of trials along the way, but the trials of the autistic individual are rarely dealt with as something that causes THEM suffering; it's usually shown as the burden on their families); they treat it as a bogeyman, a Jokeresque villain that steals a normal child's soul.

Coincidentally, there is quite a bit of the Batman mythos that relates to autism. Bruce Wayne isn't on the spectrum because he's too multi-talented in his masteries, but the drive in which he trained at martial arts/criminology/invention/breathing in space definitely resonates with Asperger's-style obsessions. The villains he faces are often tragic figures, prisoners of their own madnesses, and can be sympathetic to those who have difficulty controlling their emotions. Hell, there are two characters that may well be on the autism spectrum (albeit by fantastical circumstances) -- Cassandra Cain, the former Batgirl and current Black Bat, has tremendous martial arts skills but struggled with basic language and literacy. And Bruce's artificially-conceived son Damien Wayne may also fit; he was built to fight, he was never given social skills, he's extremely temperamental, and while he wants to do good he has little to no idea how to do so.

Of course, this all requires critical thought, and stereotypes are so much easier to digest.

How To Write A Fear Itself Tie-In comic

2011-08-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

Step 1.) Check the comic you're writing to see if there's an overarching story in progress. If there is, put it on hold until the end of the summer.

Step 2.) Find an existing character (one who isn't necessarily connected to the comic) and give them a magic hammer with a merchandise-friendly redesign attached. Don't worry about wether or not the character will actually be merchandised.

Step 3.) Give that character a new name along the lines of "(Name), Breaker of (Thing)". The first name should be something punchy, even if it doesn't make sense in any known language. The second should be something that sounds ominous.

Step 4.) Now that you have your (Breaker), have them start randomly killing (Random Civilians). Don't worry about giving them a credible motivation, the (Random Runic Dialogue) should make them seem ominous enough to compensate.

Step 5.) Have the comic's existing (Hero/Heroes) drop everything they were doing to try and stop the Breaker of Something.

Step 6.) Show how no matter what powers the cast have, or what strategies they use, the (Hero/Heroes) do anything against (Breaker). At the same time, NEVER have (Breaker) inflict any lasting damage upon anyone who counts, beyond (Random Civilians)

Step 7.) Between the action scenes, intersperse talking heads of (Hero/Heroes) whining and crying about how they can't beat (Breaker). If you wish, you can connect it to some sort of larger sociological point about the economy or the war on terror or whatnot. Don't go too far with this point, lest you get away from the Formula.

Step 8.) Resume your comic's normal storyline after the Fear Itself event is over, hoping your existing readers haven't gotten totally sick of this shit.

Follow the Horrors of Spider-Island

2011-08-16T19:03:00.000-07:00

E. Wilson is a regular follower and friend of this blog who always has good insights about comics. I'm going to repay the favor by directing you to The Horrors of Spider-Island, his admirable quest to read and review every issue of the current Spider-Man crossover. Excellent reading, and an impressive commitment.

I'll be following the main comic as well, even though I'd stopped reading ASM once I realized that Dan Slott's interpretation of a twentysomething person doesn't go much further than rollerball and drunken tattoos and the hippin' and the hoppin' us darned kids do so much. Nevertheless, I have enjoyed Slott comics in the past, Humberto Ramos' art is perfect for such an over-the-top story, and if Carlie Cooper ends up getting herself killed after her apparent regression to the intellect of a 14-year-old fangirl with anime cat ears, I will be very relieved.

(And yes, this is probably the first time I've WISHED for a superhero's girlfriend to be stuffed in the fridge, but the major sin was in making the character so shallow and obnoxious that she actually interferes with her boyfriend's saving lives.)

Dan DiDio Talks Accessibility and Diversity at SDCC 2011

2011-08-01T16:34:00.000-07:00

In Response To A Very Valid Point

This is a really feeble attempt to justify the return to Barbara Gordon Batgirl. As for the attempts to diversify... I will quote a great Master Jedi and let him respond...

" DO OR DO NOT. THERE IS NO TRY."

Oh, and the comment about "accessibility" just ground salt into the wound.

Cripz the Webcomic: A Bullet in the Spine of Bigotry

2011-08-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

Cripz, a webcomic written by Jeff Preston and illustrated by Clara Madrenas, is to disability rights what the Boondocks was to issues of race-- a wonderful comic strip that not only takes a stand against the negative stereotypes, but takes them into the basement, chains them to a plastic chair, and works them over with power tools. It's not subtle about the way it addresses ableist inequities, and probably not for the easily offended. But some points need to be made with sledgehammer force, and Cripz obliges with the might of Mjolnir's uru head.

The comic follows two high school boys in wheelchairs; Rhett, a sensitive hyper-intellectual whose idealistic discourses tend to fly straight over peoples' heads, and Griff, a hyper-masculine rap enthusiast who milks his disabled status for all it's worth. They're eventually joined by a third character, an able-bodied girl named Katie who likes Rhett (though probably not to the same extent that he likes her) but finds Griff an obnoxious tool and doesn't take his handicap as an excuse. Griff is easily the funniest of the three, and flies in the face of the "inspirationally disadvantaged" stereotype. His innocuous look belies a wildly manipulative and borderline sociopathic mind, and were he not pitied for his disability, he would likely end up in juvenile hall. At times he seems like a male, paralyzed Sarah Silverman.

The art style seems very crude, as it has the characters as sketches on lined notebook paper pasted onto colored backgrounds. However, it works for the strip. It helps establish the otherness of the protagonists, and draws immediate attention to them. This is a talking-heads social commentary strip, so the cinematographic perspective derring-do of adventure strips isn't necessary. It works especially well in the "At the Movies" strips, where Rhett and Griff imagine themselves in movies that typically eschew the handicapped. (The Captain America spoof is especially funny, as Griff imagines that the super-soldier serum leaves Steve Rogers permanently crippled by accident, but allows him to stay out of the draft, so he can fuck all the women at home while the other men go overseas to die in battle. Yes, really.)

If I had a complaint about the strip, it would be the somewhat narrow way disability is perceived. Preston and Madrenas address the issues faced by the wheelchair-bound first and foremost, and they do touch on blindness and deafness. However, mental disabilities are not addressed, despite presenting very similar challenges. This is especially bothersome when the school janitor appears, who embodies most of the delusional deranged veteran cliches. It could easily be extrapolated that he qualifies as disabled via PTSD, yet he remains a subject for the main characters to mock. This is disappointing when you consider that Rhett and Griff are just as limited as him, even if it's their bodies and not their minds that give them the societal stigma.

But I hope that the creators will address this, because if they do, this will be one of the greatest humor comic strips ever made. Early on it captured my heart with its parody of Glee, specifically the horrid stereotype Artie's dreams of walking. Rhett's fantasy is not the ability to walk, but the possession of a pimped-out multi-story wheelchair stacked with hot chicks. Given my somewhat partisan opinion about Glee (i.e. that it's a horrible show that sits at the peak of self-aggrandizing Hollywood leftism, preaching equality but never actually taking any risks with its Benneton ad stereotypes), I immediately bookmarked the comic.

You can read all of Cripz Here.

Dear Rebooted Green Arrow

2011-07-19T12:14:00.000-07:00

Mutton-Chops? REALLY?

Dammit, DC Comics, Stop Infecting My Dreams/Other Fandoms

2011-07-12T17:35:00.000-07:00

I had a bizarre dream that only a mind as obsessive about pop culture as mine could come up with unconsciously. In a dream, I was looking through a game store and saw a new game called "Metal Gear Solid: Rebirth". The front box had series hero Solid Snake at his proper age, as opposed to the prematurely elderly state we saw in MGS4. The back explained that Snake was healed by nanomachines, and that he was on a brand new adventure. If I recall correctly, Meryl was by his side; apparently she had dumped her new, kind-hearted (if uncomfortably incontinent) husband Johnny Sasaki for her teenaged crush.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR METAL GEAR SOLID 4 FOLLOW

This came as a surprise to me in the dream, because MGS4 clearly ended with the implication that Snake was as good as dead. His body was continuing to age due to the breakdown of his cloned physiology, and while he wasn't going to turn into a Foxdie WMD as previously expected, he still had only a few months remaining. Hideo Kojima intended MGS4 as the end of Solid Snake's story, and possibly the entire Metal Gear saga as well. All the subsequent games have been prequels or remakes, and the rest of the supporting cast either got a happy ending or were killed off. Unless Konami goes behind Kojima's back (which is unlikely, as the success of Metal Gear has been based heavily on its creator's artistic vision), this is not going to happen in reality, and it would be terrible if it did. It would be a slap in the face towards the original games, the members of the audience who actually understood Kojima's vision, and even towards game makers with new ideas. All in the name of trying to preserve nostalgia, rather than creating new games and properties that create future nostalgia.

Perhaps this dream was influenced by the news of the DC relaunch, as the other half of the American comics industry's Big Two has a stiff one for regressions and repetitions. While they have hired great creators and allowed them to take several franchises in interesting new directions (most notably with Batman and Green Lantern, in spite of the latter bringing back Hal Jordan as the star), they've become obsessed with a constant, Nietzcheian return to the same. Even before the relaunch was announced, Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash who died way back in 1987, came back from the grave and shuffled his successor Wally West back to the sidelines; we saw this in a mini-series called Flash: Rebirth, by the same creative team as Green Lantern: Rebirth (which did the same for Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps, albeit in a superiorly executed fashion). Similarly, the Green Lantern: Secret Origin story by Geoff Johns that updated Hal's backstory for modern continuity was followed by a Superman: Secret Origin, also by Johns. Secret Origin was followed by J. Michael Stracynski's Earth One OGN, another re-telling of the Man of Steel's early days.

The pattern repetition continues in many facets of the company's superhero publishing. The relaunch itself is a more drastic variant on One Year Later, the Post-Infinite Crisis event that had every book jump ahead one year and give their characters a new status quo. In the DCNu (as it's become known), Aquaman will have his third revamp since 2003, the second being the One Year Later run by Kurt Busiek-- if you count Aquaman's return in the Brightest Day maxi-series as another relaunch, this marks four for the character. Ditto for Hawkman and Hawkgirl. The Flash will be getting his fourth relaunch in that time, which includes the abortive Bart Allen Flash, the Wild Wests family, Barry Allen's return, and the upcoming series. This isn't even touching the unfortunate racial implications of these relaunches/regressions; for example, Ray Palmer coming back as the Atom following the death of Ryan Choi, or Wally West's multiracial family being supplanted by Barry and Iris Allen, who'd look totally appropriate at a country club.

On an individual level, many of these series were good, and many of the DCNu titles will assuredly be good. On a larger level, though, this shows an obsession with trying to preserve the same properties, continually trying to bring them back while using the minor status quo variations as the illusion of change. Maybe DC will never get any great new characters, as their star franchises are those swindled from their creators many decades ago-- today the industry is developed enough that original properties are kept by their creators. But can they at least not take those properties in an endless circle?

The Metal Gear Solid 4 analogy is especially appropriate given that game's revelations about the series at large. The Patriots, the shadowy organization responsible for all the ills of the world, are revealed to simply be super-computers. Everything they do fits into their programming, and they're stuck in a recursive loop. This explains why the Metal Gear sequels all follow the same pattern; Snake is always called upon to fight rogue super-soldiers trying to liberate the world from the Patriots (unfortunately for the world, this is planned via nuclear holocaust). Snake will always be assisted along the way, once by a FOXDIE virus covertly implanted into his body, and again by a mysterious Cyborg Ninja with a Patriot-designed exoskeleton. MGS4 is filled with subtext about how the Patriots' methods (re: sequels) are driving the world (and video game franchises) into the ground; the Beauty and the Beast Corps that Snake fights are grotesque mergers of previous bosses, with the animal names from MGS1, the weapons from MGS2, and the personalities from MGS3. All with a bit of too-disturbing-to-be-arousing T&A underneath.

In other news, have you seen the new Harley Quinn costume? Perhaps the Patriots have moved to reality, except they're interested in superhero comics instead of the military-industrial complex. At least Snake gets to rest in peace.

Our Love is Real by Sam Humphries and Steven Sanders; Funny as Chris-Chan, But Intentional!

2011-07-11T18:25:00.000-07:00

"Five years after the AIDS vaccine....plantsexuals riot in the streets for equal rights. Humans fall in love with dogs. And crystals are more than just jewelry. A chance encounter on the job changes a riot cop's life forever as he finds himself caught in a bizarre love triangle that blurs romance, crime, and lust beyond recognition."

That summary should've sold you on this mini-comic, but if not, hopefully my recommendation will. Utterly hilarious stuff, provided you're not squeamish. Find out more Here.

Fear Itself #4: Taking a (Cold) One for the Team

2011-07-07T15:58:00.000-07:00

While I've been entirely neutral about the main Fear Itself book, Marvel's once-again-obligatory crossover event gave us a great Iron Man scene yesterday. This is no surprise, as Fear Itself is written by Matt Fraction. However, Fraction gives Tony the opportunity to shine by having him stand up both to Odin the All-Father and his own alcohol addiction.

The scene is particularly bizarre, as it's technically Tony petitioning Odin for help saving the world. Since Odin is much more powerful than any of Earth's heroes (even Thor, the Odinson himself), this is a wise decision. But since Odin is so arrogant and has so little regard for humans, it was unlikely he would risk his own hide to help mortals, and might only do so if they showed complete submission.

So what does Tony do? Grabs a bottle of booze, sacrifices the sobriety he's kept for years in a single swig, and demands Odin help them now that he's shown the requisite loss of dignity.

Of course, Tony isn't actually submitting to the All-Father. He's making it clear that he has no respect for Odin and is only asking out of utter necessity. Instead, he's prodding at Odin's pride, even calling him a bully. The sacrifice of dignity is Tony jumping through the kinds of hoops Odin expects of everyone else, all the while satirizing Odin's need to bring others to his knees.

Tony also isn't sacrificing much by taking a drink. If anything, he's confronting what's been one of his worst Achilles' heels. There are many alcoholics that are able to overcome their problem to the point of being able to drink again in moderation. Tony isn't one of those, and even though he's been willfully* sober since his 1980s uber-binge. Yet the policy of complete and utter abstinence hasn't worked too well for him, as writers have taken every opportunity to show how he still thirsts. Fraction himself addressed this in the .1 issue, showing how Tony compensates for his alcohol addiction by indulging in his sex addiction. At least Tony can't crash his Iron Man suit into a bus load of school children under the influence of having blown his wad, but he's still maintaining an addictive personality and feeding his alcoholism through total abstinence.

it was only a matter of time before Tony relapsed, given his thirst; Obadiah Stane ruined Tony by prodding at this weakness, and Justine Hammer sent Tony a bottle through mail in the hopes of repeating this plan. But though Tony may be drunk now, this doesn't mean he's off the wagon. In fact, it may mean that he'll be able to control his addiction, rather than simply deny it. Just because he's not submitting before a higher power (Literally!) doesn't mean he'll once again be a hopeless drunk.

Well played, Mr. Fraction.

* Excluding instances where he was supernaturally forced to drink, such as when the AI VOR/TEX stole his body

Dear Facebook DCU SDCC Protest: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

2011-06-29T18:23:00.000-07:00

Oh wait, you're not kidding.

Look, I'm no stranger to having fan preferences and making online complaints when those preferences aren't met (though I try to distinguish between what's personal preference and what's genuinely a loss of depth in the comics, and only act on the latter), but trying to organize a live protest? As in, people dragging their asses to SDCC to whine about DC changing "their comics" while thinking themselves as important as the Tiananmen Square Tank Man?

Holy Terror: Frank Miller vs. The Islamic World

2011-06-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

More Of Frank Ruining His Legacy

I like this quote;

“My guy carries a couple of guns and is up against an existential threat. He’s not just up against a goofy villain. Ignoring an enemy that’s committed to our annihilation is kind of silly. It just seems that chasing the Riddler around seems silly compared to what’s going on out there. I’ve taken Batman as far as he can go.”

Does it really matter if he's using sub machine guns, Bat-Shark-Repellent, or poison-tipped Batarangs (a la All Star Batman and Robin)? It's still blunt physical force, and it's still largely irrelevant against what Miller himself calls an existential threat.

This isn't in any better taste than publishing a graphic novel right after 9/11 where the actual Batman fights Al Qaeda. Just because you filed off the Dark Knight's serial numbers and gave him handguns doesn't mean you're doing anything more than one-dimensional propaganda.

RIP Gene Colan :(

2011-06-25T09:18:00.000-07:00

Legendary Marvel artist Gene Colan passed a couple of days ago, at the age of 84. I met him briefly at San Diego ComiCon in 2001, when I was still a punk teenager. He was a very nice man and seemed pleased that I was aware of his artwork on Iron Man. Though I imagine most 16-year-old boys wouldn't have been aware of those classic old issues, it would be years before I became aware of the breadth of his career.

Gene Colan had one of the most illustrious careers in comics, starting back when Marvel was still called Timely. At Marvel, he helped bring their fledgling superhero universe to life. His contributions included the early Daredevil comics, the creation of the Falcon (one of the first African-American superheroes, and a mainstay in the universe to this date), a large part of Steve Gerber's Howard the Duck series, and the entirety of Tomb of Dracula. All of this was drawn in his sharp, fluid, value-intensive style.

What I want to focus on, though, is his final Marvel work; a flashback WW2 Captain America story written by Ed Brubaker. When I saw this, it didn't look like the Gene Colan comics of which I was familiar, due to the unique mix of graphite and watercolor. But it was just as beautiful as any of his earlier works. It was a dark, atmospheric style suited to a dark, atmospheric story involving Captain America and Bucky being besieged by vampires. Not only was Colan an extremely talented artist but he was able to continue learning, growing, and reinventing himself, even as he approached his final days.

God bless you, Gene, and rest in peace. :(

TVTropes Gives Me Bigoted Backhanded 'Praise'

2011-06-23T16:47:00.000-07:00

Every day I go to TV Tropes, and every day I look to see if there've been edits to the Ruby's World page. Usually there aren't, so I was excited to see that somebody had catalogued some new tropes in relation to my comic. However, some of the the tropes added were offensive, and not for their dismissal of my talents. I quote directly from the YMMV section;

"Better Than It Sounds: Anybody who's trolled around the internet for long enough is no stranger to mentally handicapped people doing stories revolving around their aspie fixations with art that looks like it was done by somebody in grade school. That such a thing could be well-written, even thought-provoking and emotionally moving, is something else altogether."

Putting aside the insult towards my art (which I don't think is fair, because unlike Chandler I don't plagiarize and actively work to improve my draughtsmanship and my visual repertoire), I find the comparison between me and Christian Weston Chandler to be appalling PERIOD. This is the webcomics equivalent of Godwin's Law. And I've been compared to the being of unfathomable patheticness because A.) I am also on the autism spectrum and B.) also do a webcomic. The praise at the end is a backhanded compliment, because it suggests that I shouldn't be able to write anything good because of my apparent mental handicaps.

Given how much of Ruby's World is about the value of the individual experience due to the way the individual uses the hand life deals them (no matter how crappy), and given the explicit anti-ableist references I've made in the comic, it seems the person who added that trope didn't glean anything from my work. Apparently the value to my comic is in spite of my neurology, and is not informed by it.

Jesus, people, if you want to say "Your Webcomic Is Bad and You Should Feel Bad" to me, say it. Don't insult everyone on the spectrum in doing so, and FOR GOD'S SAKES DON'T USE CHRIS-CHAN AS YOUR STEREOTYPE OF AUTISM.

X-Men First Class Movie Review: Magneto Roolz, Charlie Droolz

2011-06-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

X-Men: First Class was easily the finest Marvel movie I've ever seen, and probably the finest superhero movie (eclipsed only by Dark Knight, but at least First Class was unmolested by Christian Bale's goofy-ass growling) ever made. The difficulties with the film's production allowed director Matthew Vaughn and his crew to create a Marvel movie liberated from almost all of the cliche hollywood narratives, and gave us a superhero movie that actually had something important to say.

At its heart, the film is the story of the how X-Men's two key philosophers met,i.e. Charles Xavier (played by James McAvoy) and Erik "Magneto" Lensherr (played by Michael Fassbender). As expected from a movie about Xavier and Magneto, the story shows them drifting apart as their ideologies prove incompatible. But while the comics and the previous movies left the Xavier/Magneto equation as a matter of good vs. evil, X-Men: First Class shows us that Xavier is just as flawed as Magneto, and both men are equally victim to their hubris.

No punches are pulled in showing how different--and better-- Charles' youth was from Erik's. While Erik grew up in Auschwitz and saw his mother brutally murdered, Charles grew up in a mansion, and met a young mutant girl (Raven Darkholme/Mystique, played by Jessica Lawrence) to relieve him of his poor little rich boy angst. And while Erik spent his young adult hood hunting down Nazis in a quest to find the man who shot his mother, Charles went to Oxford, used his telepathic powers and knowledge of mutation to whore around, and kept the admiring adult Raven firmly in the friend zone (which he claimed was due to their childhood together, but was more likely motivated by his repulsion at her true, blue form; unlike Raven, Charles has no struggle trying to pass). Charles got the advantages of being a mutant without the drawbacks, and he didn't even appear to have the telepathic angst caused by stray thoughts.

The two men eventually meet when they end up facing a common enemy-- Sebastian Shaw (played by Kevin Bacon), who not only was the Nazi doctor who killed Erik's mom in an attempt to trigger his powers, but is using his Hellfire Club connections and mutant posse to try and heat up the Cold War. From there the two men instantly bond, and with the help of the CIA and agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne, playing a much different character than the comic version and her Scottish brogue), they start assembling young mutants. Of course, the more they get to know each other, the more they end up drifting apart, and the conclusion is tragic (though inevitable, given that this is a prequel).

Shaw makes an excellent villain because of the singularity of his vision and the lack of morals getting in his ways (as he did ally himself with the Nazis). But though neither Charles or Erik are as outright evil as Shaw, they both fall victim to their singular perspectives without trying to consider the other one's opinions. Note that the founding of the X-Men could not have been done without Erik-- Erik pushed to keep the CIA out of their affairs (while Charles would have cooperated), and Erik got Xavier to train the students for combat (Charles would've just taken them back to their homes, even for the ones whose homes were jails or strip clubs). Also note that Magneto doesn't become truly powerful until he embraces Xavier's motto that true focus lies between rage and serenity. When the two men cooperate, they can achieve virtually anything because they compensate for each other's weaknesses. It's when they become enemies that both end up being a detriment to mutantkind.

That's right, I said both. Vaughn's movie and McAvoy's performance give form to an idea that until recently many X-Men writers have simply danced around-- the idea that Xavier truly is holding mutantkind back. As we see in the movie, Xavier's idea of peace means teaching mutants to pass for human. He encourages Raven to maintain a regular blonde, Caucasian appearance, cooperates with government agencies that clearly want to enslave and/or terminate mutants (even if it's just starting as registration, as Erik points out), and advocates Erik against killing the former Nazi Shaw. He will use his powers to brainwash when necessary for survival, but that just makes him hypocritical. For Charles, the goal isn't "mutant and proud" so much as "you're a mutant? I hardly noticed".

Magneto's actions are similarly misguided, and definitely more destructive due to his extremist bent. Yet he's still more sympathetic than Xavier, because he actually knows what homo superior will have to face. Similar to Mystique, the audience finds him more appealing because he's fighting not just for mutantkind's survival, but also for mutantkind's individuality. Chris Rosa of Meltdown Comics got me excited about this film by telling me that Fassbender played Erik similar to Big Boss/Naked Snake of the Metal Gear Solid games, and the comparison is apt. As corrupted as both characters would later become, we see exactly what traumas put them on this path and sympathize with their perspectives, even if we can't condone their actions.

In many ways, this is a spiritual prequel to the modern X-Men comics. Grant Morrison's X-Men tried to resolve a dilemma similar to the one posed in First Class by having BOTH Xavier and Magneto prove obsolete. The way he portrayed Magneto's decline was a bit less subtle (if you can call getting high on drugs and genocide subtle, though I'd argue that it was a necessary point), but Morrison also demonstrated Xavier's impotence by having all the mutant cultural revolutions happen outside of his control. Keep in mind that the Xavier who outed the X-Men was actually his evil alien twin using his body; once the real Xavier returns, he finds himself a mere observer to a world far more complex than he could imagine. Yet that world was there all along, when the X-Men were playing superhero to appeal to the human masses while retreating to the gilded cage that is Xavier's Mansion during their off hours. This makes the X-Men's Utopia an inevitable response to a multicultural world*, allowing the new culture their own space to create their own society.

I could go on about the other details of the film, such as the specific actors' performances or the bizarre choices of characters, but the overall story was so great that complaining about small details** feels like a fanboyish waste of time. Highly Recommended.

* No matter how much of a douchepocalypse their president-for-life may be.
** I will note without reservation that the treatment of Darwin was angering, reducing one of the most charismatic of the new recruits to minority cannon fodder.

Learning Social Skills with Solid Snake

2011-06-19T18:29:00.000-07:00

Metal Gear Solid is infamous for its many repeated quirks, including rampant fourth wall breakage, high proportions of cutscenes, rampant homo-eroticism, and coaxing tears out of even the most masculine gamers' eyes. One of the most prominent quirks is protagonist Solid Snake's tendency to echo whatever is being said to him, repeating the most significant proper noun of the previous statement as a question. The most obvious example occurs whenever the titular Metal Gear robot is mentioned, in which Snake will say, "Metal Gear?!"

This can be annoying, but it's also a valuable conversation-maintenance tactic that can be applied to real life. By repeating the subject of the other person's conversation, Snake demonstrates that he was listening to what they were saying. He also fills in what otherwise would have been an awkward pause had he not spoken up. And by phrasing it as a question, he shows to the other person that he's interested in what they're saying and wants to hear more. Since almost everybody likes to be asked questions, they won't scrutinize the fact that Snake isn't contributing much to the conversation himself (unless he's making some poetic speech about the battlefield, in which case you listen because it's Snake).

Snake is not only a master of CQC, but he demonstrates with elegant simplicity an uncanny understanding of the dynamics of conversation.

Dear Rebooted Superman

2011-06-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

You've got your costume on inside-out. The trim goes on the inside. A Man of Tomorrow should be able to figure this out.

Gail Simone Talks Batgirl, and why Able-Bodied is Better

2011-06-10T16:14:00.000-07:00

In light of the online controversy regarding the new, seemingly able-bodied Batgirl series, Gail Simone gave an interview with Newsarama blogger Jill Pantozzi (who wrote a wonderful essay about the importance of the paraplegic Oracle's merits, as an inspiration for her own life and physical challenges). Simone was nice enough to respond to Pantozzi's article with an interview; however, while Simone was limited by her inability to divulge spoilers about the new title, she made comments that betray her responsibilities not only to represent people with disabilities, but to tell a good story respecting the intelligence of the readers.

While Simone remains civil in the Interview, her arguments for the able-bodied Barbara Gordon Batgirl use the worst tendencies of modern DC Comics as an excuse for retconning Barbara's spine back-- in other words, saying that "everyone else is jumping off a cliff, so I might as well too". She mentions various resurrections and magical "healings" as reasons why erasing the spinal damage done by the Joker's bullet should be acceptable...

"For newsworthiness, well, I just took a look the top sales charts for Marvel and DC, and it's unavoidable...the stories that the readers support in large numbers are nearly all in the middle of storylines that were considered completely unthinkable at one point; Hal Jordon replacing Kyle Rayner, Bucky returning from the dead, Jason Todd returning from the dead, Johnny Storm dying, Dick Grayson as Batman, Bruce Wayne dying, Barry Allen returning as the Flash, on and on and on. To some, these are all stunts, but they have been executed brilliantly and I strongly suspect many will be among the best-remembered stories of their respective runs.

...it's open to strong debate wether or not these are brilliant stories. Even the ones that were executed brilliantly have their problems; for example, having Batman's death be explicitly temporary from day one undermined what little drama superhero comics retain. But as Simone continues to dodge the issue, she tries to give plot-related reasons to remove Oracle that sidestep the disability issue...

"A lot of readers and a lot of editors had a story problem with Oracle, in that she made for such an easy, convenient story accelerator, that we missed the sense of having characters have to struggle to discover, to solve mysteries. Famously, it helped make Batman less of a detective and more of a monster hunter."

So don't use her as a convenient story accelerator. Just because you can use a character's skills as a deus ex machina doesn't mean you have to. And it gets especially more damning when she tries to divide the opinions of PWD advocates...

"But I want to get this out really quickly, it's about the myth of monolithic opinion. It's been sort of simply accepted that there's this block of disabled folks who are against this idea, en masse, and I do have to say quickly that that's not the case. There has always been a vocal minority of PWD [people with disabilities] who wanted to see Babs healed and out of the chair, always. It started out a tiny minority but it did get larger as the years went on. Again, I don't want those people to be forgotten. Even with some PWD advocacy groups, the response has always been mixed. I feel like I have to represent that group as well, here. It's a much smaller group, as far as I can tell, however. "

I've encountered people, even people with disabilities who want to see Babs healed and out of the chair. I tend not to see them as people whose opinions are worth acknowledging. Their opinion is rooted in escapist wish fulfillment, trying to imagine a world where disabling injuries can be magically healed. That's all well and good, but if you find your own challenges such a curse, escaping in the adventures of a character who does get her legs back isn't going to solve shit. It's just a soma that, instead of letting you contextualize your own experience through fiction and receive a greater understanding, simply gives you a brief distraction from reality.

A major reason many people (myself included) like Oracle is because she's one of the few superhero characters who is legitimately handicapped with no tie-in superpowers. She doesn't have super-compensating senses like the blind Daredevil, or super-powered artificial limbs like the disfigured Cyborg. She is in a wheelchair, and all of her activities have to be done from that chair. The way she negotiates life and ethics from a place of severe physical and societal limitations is inspiring, and as Jill Pantozzi expressed, serves as a role model in the best ways.

But then, this is the straw on my metaphorical hump...

"Role model or not, that is problematic and uncomfortable, and the excuses to not cure her, in a world of purple rays and magic and super-science, are often unconvincing or wholly meta-textual. And the longer it goes on, the more it has stretched credibility."

Of course it's meta-textual, it's a fucking story. If you take continuity literally, you can use said purple rays and magic and super-science to solve all problems. You just pull out whatever deus ex machina you want and erase the conflict, thus erasing the drama. Again, this makes fiction into an escape, not a catharsis. Instead of creating a world to reflect and better understand our own, you're just creating a virtual reality that people can cower to when actual reality is too hard.

Simone goes on to talk about how she's always loved Batgirl, and how she's always wanted to write Barbara as Batgirl, and how being shot by the Joker was her motivation for starting the Women in Refrigerators project. She also says that she was impressed by the writers who made Barbara stronger person from being in the chair, and didn't want to take away the character she became through that adversity. But that appears to be exactly what she's doing, otherwise she wouldn't need to get on the defensive. No matter how great the character became in Birds of Prey, under the hand of Simone, Dixon, and others, it means nothing because the nostalgia for the character in the less-than-serious 60's show is paramount. Yes, Barbara's transition to Oracle came from a Fridging in The Killing Joke, where she was shot by the Joker just to make him look more evil. But does that mean the 20 years of the character since then have been for nothing?

Simone has become an excellent writer not just for her skills, but for her acknowledgement that the world of superheroes is full of perspectives beyond the majority, just like our own. This feels like a betrayal, because it sure sounds like she's erasing one of those perspectives to go back to a fantasy FROM the minority.

It doesn't matter that this is Barbara's first solo ongoing series, because if her mobility is fully restored and her experiences are washed away, she's just yet another supermodel in tights, and tights borrowed from a male character at that. When you remove the adversity, you remove the conflict, and you remove the meaning gained.

DC and Batgirl Walk To The Bank?

2011-06-06T16:14:00.000-07:00

As part of DC's latest attempt to solve their continuity problems via increasingly convoluted reboots, Batgirl returns in a new series written by Gail Simone (who handled the character for years in her excellent Birds of Prey run). It's been confirmed that the new Batgirl is Barbara Gordon, who originally had the role but gave it up after being shot by the Joker, which left her in a wheelchair (and prompted her to become Oracle, Batman's tech-guru, founding member of the Birds of Prey, and a much more interesting character).

I don't want to jump to conclusions, so I'm hoping the speculation that this is Barbara Gordon in a high-tech Batgirl armor that gives her prosthetic locomotion is correct. In that case, it's a progression of the character, putting her back on the frontlines but still making it clear that she's disabled, and still has to cope with the physical and psychological challenges posed by her handicap (especially since she'd still have the memories and associated PTSD of being gruesomely shot by the Joker, one of the most horrifyingly sadistic villains in fiction). Walking via robot suit isn't a substitute for having working legs, especially since Barbara wouldn't be in the costume 24/7. She'd lose the symbolism of being DC's full-time wheelchair character, but if there was a compelling reason for her to take up crimefighting, it could work.

However, if this is just rebooting Barbara back to being an able-bodied superheroine (albeit an inferior distaff counterpart to Batman, with the patronizing codename "BatGIRL" despite being over 18 years old), then it's incredibly insulting. It's insulting to readers with physical and/or mental handicaps who can't retcon away their challenges. It's insulting to readers who enjoyed seeing the character progress into not only a prominent disabled character, but a genuinely interesting character thanks to the way the experience shaped her (as while Barbara was a super-genius, she was also capable of manipulating her friends for the greater good, a character trait that doesn't have anything to do with her handicap). And it's insulting to fans of Gail Simone to see that she doesn't respect the meaning fans drew from her work with Barbara, such as having the character appear to be magically cured only to have it be little more than the return of feeling to her toes (which Barbara coped with marvelously, choosing to be grateful for the little message that her limbs were still there).

Please let it be the former.

Toys R Us Devalues The Meaning Of Heroism

2011-05-23T18:10:00.000-07:00

If you've been to Toys R Us in the past couple of years, as a parent getting something for your kids or as an adult collector getting toys for yourself, you've probably seen the Autism Speaks promotions they're doing. This pro-cure organization, the organization that takes money largely for abstract research and pharmaceutical studies** over helping actual people, asks TRU customers to donate to help "solve the puzzle". Thus, the experience of the autistic people themselves is marginalized, as we are just a puzzle to be solved, a weird disorder to be put before AS' metaphorical Dr. House so it may be cured and the normal person within us can be freed.

It always bugs the crap out of me when I'm asked to donate at the register, and since they've started doing their "be a hero for autism" advertising, it's especially aggravating. Because, as a fan of the superhero comics that have led me into the store even beyond the point when it was "age-appropriate", I tend to think that the hero label should be applied to those who undertake difficult tasks for a noble cause. Raising an autistic child, especially a severely handicapped one, is a difficult task, but it's how the parent copes with the task and treats their child that determines their heroism, not the simple fact that they have the burden. (Lord knows I've seen plenty of parents of autistic people who are assholes, as well as great parents like my own). And putting down a dollar when going to a toy store means absolutely nothing. You're not sacrificing anything by giving your pocket change to a faceless "nonprofit" so they can do the work for you while you hold onto a glimmer of self-aggrandization.

And the worst part is the fact that the cashiers who ask me these questions aren't to blame, because they're just doing their job. Otherwise I'd prepare for the inevitable "do you want to be a hero for autism" question by putting on my best Solid Snake voice, and growling, "I'm no hero. I'm just an old aspie brought out of retirement for some new transformers."

* Me being in the latter category, obviously.
** Yeah, I'm getting vibes from the third X-Men movie here. I SAY WE ARE THE CURE!!!!

You Will Believe A Nine-Foot Cyberneticized Irish-Jewish Girl Can Fly

2011-05-08T16:50:00.000-07:00

By directing her generated energy downward, Ruby can propel herself into the air, sort of like a techno-organic counterpart to Iron Man's boot jets. She hasn't done this in canon until now, but I've been waiting to show this moment for a long time, and have even teased it in some of the images in my gallery. it.

I started out simply intending for Ruby to be big and strong, but that wouldn't have been enough power to make her the game-changer on the world stage. Hence the perpetual motion abilities lend themselves to a very diverse power set. That, and I think the pink energy is a cool visual.

In conclusion, I'm not just pulling new powers for the protagonist out of my ass.

The Heroic Age And Its Discontents

2011-05-03T16:40:00.000-07:00

One year ago, Marvel's big thing was the Heroic Age, returning to a place of heroes being heroes and villains being villains after years of Civil Wars and Dark Reigns. Today, this is giving way for Fear Itself, which so far has the Marvel Universe public returning to their usual state of apocalyptic panic and incompetent xenophobia. The age of the bright, cheery shared universe status quo is ending, in favor of Mighty Marvel chaos and trepidation.

And I, for one, am relieved by this development.

The Heroic Age reminded me of Civil War in the sense that the only good titles published under that banner were rebelling AGAINST the basic premise, wether intentional or not. When Civil War was going on, the framework set up by Mark Millar was so shoddy that every other writer ended up contradicting the original intention, as seen in stories where Iron Man is portrayed as an outright villain (which, to be fair, is the only thing you can do with the creator of Clor) instead of one of two morally relative sides, or stories where the heroes' attempts to capture actual wrong-doers are hobbled by bureaucracy and petty in-fighting. The Heroic Age doesn't suffer from the same problem in the sense that it's not a poorly built world-- the premise is pretty straightforward. The problem with the Heroic Age is that the setup is anti-dramatic.

Marvel's marketing of the Heroic Age was the kind of "everything's going to be alright" optimism seen during Obama's inauguration, and lost after reality set in. Because the Marvel Universe is fictional, the authors could convincingly sweep the recent past under the rug and move forward, as seen by Cyclops dodging any and all penalties for his sins in X-Force. But by the same token, peace and prosperity is NOT ideal for a fictional universe. Conflict is what motivates good drama, but the Heroic Age moved the Marvel Universe into a peacetime state, with the conflicts largely regressed back to isolated supervillain fisticuffs.

If this meant a return to books that were relatively self-contained with shared universe compatibility becoming optional, I would be all for the Heroic Age. But Marvel launched it as the new status quo for all the books. The new Director of SHIELD, a job whose occupant is required to appear in every Marvel book, is Steve Rogers. Since his reputation makes Abraham Lincoln look like a child pornographer, he'll never be caught doing the kinds of morally dubious things Nick Fury and Tony Stark had to do (and which gave Norman Osborn a hard-on). His Avengers are basically every hero under the sun, pro-registration and anti-registration alike (though that issue's been removed). And his enmity with Tony Stark was resolved in Avengers Prime, which amounted to an Asgardian adventure making Tony beg for forgiveness (despite having a good case for pro-registration, random acts of evil like Clor aside), and Steve forgiving him.

The X-Men's DeciMation dilemma was resolved, but in a half-assed way that swept the issue of the limited mutant population under the rug and exonerated Cyclops for unforgivable sins-- note how Steve Rogers doesn't seem to know about X-Force, the Legacy Virus strain in Secret Invasion, or other war crimes. Their first Heroic Age story basically ignored the hard questions and had them fight vampires, offering little more than inconsequential fight scenes and Twilight-bandwagoning*. Daredevil's descent into fanaticism would have been justified by what he'd been through and what the heroes had conveniently forgotten, but it turned out that it was just a demon using him as a meat-puppet. And the Secret Avengers' first mission (not sure about their later ones) hardly fit the tone that black ops requires, instead having them fight villains on Mars. As Ellis put it (IIRC), it's secret because nobody cares.

The books that have been genuinely compelling in the Heroic Age have been the ones questioning this optimism. Avengers Academy is the best example, because it deals with the kids traumatized by Norman Osborn's experiments, and has them counseled by the Avengers with the most baggage of their own. Captain America has made a big deal about how Bucky can't escape his past, especially when standing next to a living Steve Rogers. And the new X-Force, with Wolverine leading a team of hardened anti-heroes instead of child soldiers, openly acknowledges that some situations will require resolutions that can't be seen in the Heroic Age. Of course, these are all stories going against the nature of the Heroic Age's naive optimism. They're saying, don't let the bright marketing fool you-- the life of a hero still casts shadows.

What's been the most interesting example of the Heroic Age's tension is Stark Resilient, the first post-lobotomy story by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larocca. Thanks to erasing his brain (and the Registration Database with it), Tony doesn't remember any of his Civil War-era sins. But he's pieced together what he's done, and has almost completely stepped out of the military-industrial complex that informs modern superhero stories. Not only has he retired from his role as all-seeing police chief a la Major Zero**, but he's given up trying to engage in conflict unless provoked. His goal is to win wars preemptively by eliminating reasons for conflict, be it with the repulsor batteries threatening to replace oil, or by creating new jobs in the rebuilding of Asgard. Unfortunately, his engagement with the bad guys has gone beyond self-defense and towards an obstructive pacifism, as he simply tries to avoid conflict rather than resolving it (as seen by his show of faux-groveling in the Doc Ock story). He'll have to once more learn that sometimes force is a necessary solution, and that some enemies can't be coaxed with the promise of an improved quality of life.

Still, it's preferable to slugging vampires.

*Thank God Jubilee lost her original mutant powers, otherwise she'd be a Sparkling Vampire.

** If you've played Metal Gear Solid 4, you know just how well this comparison fits.

Sonichu Episode 15 Critical Review Part Two: Compulsory Monogamy

2011-05-01T22:46:00.000-07:00

Let's Do The Time Warp Again

As if the Family Guy "Skitch" wasn't terrible enough, here we have Christian Weston Chandler's adventure through the "glory days" of high school, joined by his "sweet friend" Megan and his plagiarism prototype Bionic the Hedgehog. And if there's one thing that comes of this voyage through time and space, it's Chris-Chan's ability to play matchmaker for his forgotten electric hedgehog, while lamenting his own isolation.

At the opening of the chapter, Bionic has been on a date with Megan's furry companion, Megagi La Skunk. Megagi, a creation of the real Megan Schroeder, is distinct from any of Chandler's hedgehogs; not only is she a different species, but she has a punk-influenced look that sets her apart from Chandler's hyper-feminized Rosechus. Of course, the pink stripes and spiked bracelets don't keep her from being dragged into Chandler's interpretation of adult relationships, where things progress in a linear fashion that invariably results in sex on the third date. Megagi ends up just as obsequious as the other Rosechus, with any potential for individually stripped away so none of Chandler's hedgehogs "feel"* alone.

But this mechanically depraved form of cartoon animal sex is what Chris-Chan desires, and he whines over the fact that he can't get with Megan. She sees him about to cry and offers some moral support, which immediately perks up his mood. Megan is impressed by Chris-Chan's 180 degree mood shift, even thinking to herself that he has a "Goku-get-'em" attitude. Yes, she actually says that under Chandler's pen.

You know how many great writers recommend that aspiring authors listen to real people's conversations? Christian Weston Chandler's dialogue proves the merits to this statement. Because of Chandler's infamous contempt for anything outside his own experience, he gives everyone the same awkwardly melodramatic and childish lines. They make references that come out of nowhere and often don't fit the character-- even if Megan is an anime fan, it's highly unlikely she'd make a DBZ reference in her inner monologue about her feelings (however made up) for a man. Humor is infused so randomly that it doesn't even reflect what people might actually find funny. And nothing is ever dishonest or understated, because every character wears their heart (at whatever level of shattering) on their sleeve.

If we were to consider Sonichu as an intentionally terrible work, though, this would fit into the world's magical realism. This is a voyage into the mind of a depraved man-child, raised almost exclusively by television and video games. Everyone, even the designated antagonists, speaks in his over-the-top, reference-saturated vernacular. And if Sonichu is intentionally terrible, then it's a masterpiece on the level of anything to come from Alan Moore's wooly head.

Oh, and there's some plot about time travel and making sure that history stays on track, but clearly Chandler didn't care enough about it to have the plot make sense. So why should we?

* And it's documented that Chandler actually believes that these characters are real people, albeit in an alternate dimension a la Roger Rabbit. His concern for their welfare overrides any interest in making them interesting to the audience.

Sonichu Critical Review, Episode 15 Part 1: OWWW, MY AXELS

2011-04-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

Lucky There's A Family Guy

I'm breaking up the Sonichu review again because as the comic gets worse and worse, there's more to talk about. In this case, I'm discussing the Family Guy "Skitch"* he single biggest failure in Sonichu from a craft standpoint. There are plenty of sequences that are more unoriginal, pathetic, and/or outright depraved. However, Christian Weston Chandler's Family Guy Skitch fails hardest at what it set out to do. While most of Sonichu can be classified as drama that is unintentionally hilarious, this is Chandler's attempt at comedy-- and it fails miserably.

In the middle of Chris-Chan's adventure through his high school years, our protagonist says "I feel as silly as the time I temporarily gained weight, became stupid, and went to watch TV at Ghost Command". He then gives Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane a sketch involving Sammy, a man with Peter Griffin's corpulent frame** but Chris-Chan's clown-striped wardrobe. When looking for the bathroom at the headquarters for the Filmation Ghostbusters (not related to the Ghostbusters people actually remember and care about), Sammy apparently falls down an elaborate chute, goes through a sequence that's omitted for being "too gross and silly", and falls on the Ghost Buggy, who screams "OWW, MY AXELS" in pain.

Okay, where do I begin...

1.) When Family Guy's humor works, it works because it happens so swiftly***. Without any meaningful narrative structure or coherent character arcs, MacFarlane's show relies on one wacky joke after another. The "remember the time I" vignettes take you completely off guard, making them feel more humorous due to their random nature. Chandler, on the other hand, takes several pages setting the joke up. He makes clear distinctions between him and "Sammy", makes it clear that he's pitching this to MacFarlane, and has several panels which are just Sammy walking down the halls with no apparent comedic value.

2.) Family Guy has become famous/infamous for obscure references, but even its most arcane joke doesn't go further than cult classics. The Filmation Ghostbusters is a show that is all but unknown, lingering in the dollar DVD bins of department stores, and only seeing the light of day when a parent needs to shut their child up for cheap. The Ghostbusters movies, and their subsequent cartoons, are the ones people actually remember, and actually have been spoofed by Family Guy. Of course, Chandler's fanboyism leads him to stick to his "Real" Ghostbusters when the rest of the world has moved on, even if it makes his joke irrelevant.

3.) If you say "Scene Omitted, Too Gross and Silly", you're telling, not showing. This only works if you have some kind of clear suggestive imagery, giving the audience something to go on. Chandler just uses this blurb because he can't be bothered to draw what's gross and silly, and because he assumes that we'll take his word for it.

4.) "Oww, My Axels" is....I don't even know what it is, just that it's not funny.

5.) At the end of the skitch, Sammy convenes with Chris-Chan, asking his creator if he can keep his new wardrobe. Chris-Chan approves, and lets Sammy know that his medallion is not the original Sonichu Medallion, and has special writing on the back to clarify it as an officially licensed variant. Why Chandler is so hung-up on maintaining copyrights to his work is a mystery, given how all his work is plagiarized. Furthermore, it's another case of Chandler assuming that the rest of the world cares about the same things he does, even though he has little to no interest engaging with the rest of the world.

If you were trying to create a method of child raising that would result in Christian Weston Chandler (and you'd have to be a complete and utter monster to do this), using his influences is only part of the story. You also have to consider everything he's willfully ignored, and keep that from the subject. The Skitch is a Family Guy-style gag filtered through Chandler's limited experience, without any knowledge or interest in the outside world and what they find funny.

*Chandler not only doesn't bother to spell sketch right, but he mangles Seth MacFarlane's name, the very guy to whom he is allegedly pitching this sequence.
** And yes, Sammy is a closer approximation to what Christian Weston Chandler actually looks like than his svelte author avatar. Or to put it the way Audiobook Narrator dethchemist did, "We see that Chris is indeed fat and stupid".
*** He's also become fond of absurdly long and repetitive gags, a fondness that seems increasingly exclusive to MacFarlane himself. But even those are more focused than Chandler's writing.

Thor's Discs= Kirby's Genius

2011-04-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

After blogging about heavier subjects, I wanted to talk about something a bit more enjoyable. So let us discuss one of the omnipresent visual markers of one of Marvel's most beloved characters; the discs on Thor's shirt.

If you were asked to describe the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby interpretation of the Norse God of Thunder, the first things that might come to mind would not be those shiny discs on his manly chest. You'd certainly mention the hammer, the long glam-rock blonde hair, the winged helmet, or the cape. You might even discuss the symbols of his mortal identity, how his hammer turned into a gnarled walking stick when used by his mortal self of Dr. Donald Blake. But you probably wouldn't think of the discs. They'd come in last in your description, if at all.

Yet the discs have been included in every major iteration of Thor. Not only did the original costume endure for three decades without a change, but all the major updates* include these circles. This includes the Heroes Reborn look, the King Thor costume, the current Coipel costume, and the upcoming movie outfit. Even Ultimate Thor, who discarded or modified every other piece of Marvel Thor iconography, kept the discs on his leather outfit.

The late Jack Kirby had a simple, clean style, but his costumes tended to be ornate and unusual. It is a testament to his genius that his characters looked impressive instead of silly. This was especially noteworthy in his DC titles; Mister Miracle had his red-yellow-and-green ensemble, OMAC mixed bright blue and orange with the world's mightiest mohawk, and Darkseid hosted a short skirt and long boots worthy of a schoolgirl hentai. But none of them looked stupid under Kirby-- his stylings were so dynamic and energetic that he made the costumes work. And he also gave us characters of elegant simplicity like Black Panther, Silver Surfer, the Thing, and Captain America.

Thor, however, is more the former than the latter. The discs on his shirt serve no clear purpose; they're not even a clear symbol like the Superman "S" or Captain Marvel's thunderbolt. There's already a "T" symbol on Thor's belt, which under most artists would be enough. But the discs provide a nice disruption of the monotony; their shiny nature contrasts well with the black of Thor's tunic. And the six discs are arranged in perfect symmetry. It's both aesthetically comfortable and impressive, and served as the perfect look for an Asgardian Thunder God.

The discs become the kind of iconography that seems so perfect that you think you should have thought of it. But you didn't. Nobody did except Kirby. It's yet another proof of his unparalleled ability.

* Excluding the short-lived leather look from the Messner-Loebs run, which most of us would likely rather forget.

Black Panther The Unfulfilled, Brain-Damaged Badass: Guest Post By Omar Karindu

2011-04-24T18:40:00.000-07:00

(The latter is taken with permission from Omar Karindu, who wrote this during one of our PM exchanges at Alvaro's. Since it is both a great essay and ties well into the blog's overall themes, I asked if I could share his work.)

I've probably said this before in one of our exchanges, but the mentality at the IM board can also be found at the Black Panther and (especially) Superman boards. There are also a few Batman fans around the world who behave the same way; some of them even seem to end up writing at DC. Certain kinds of characters seem to come from a place of privilege -- framed initially as physically or mentally "unbeatable," with high-status jobs or massive wealth -- and that attracts a type of fan who wants an unreflective power fantasy. This is especially unfortunate for Superman, given the wonderful way his early adventures positioned him as a genuine hero of the underprivileged with a very progressive agenda for the times.* The superhero at its inception is a utopian fantasy, even if we need to deconstruct that fantasy in order to get real meaning and social value from it.**

Our discussion at the IMMB also made me turn back to to Priest's Panther run, partly because the board's reaction to T'Challa briefly outwitting Stark smacked of not only what we've been discussing, but a host of unfortunate implications tied to American forms of white privilege. Looking at it now, I wonder if Priest's run deserves even higher estimation than I gave it at the time it was first published: prior to issue #50, when Executive Meddling derailed the title, it's actually a striking example of the deconstruction you mention -- T'Challa behaves like the omnicompetent, stoic, and secretive superhero type who is always ahead of the curve.

It doesn't bring him easy victories and a life of luxury. Instead, he pays dearly for it; when he decides to behave like an ubermensch, beyond the morality and concerns of his friends and allies, he doesn't get the easy forgiveness Bruce Wayne endlessly receives. Instead, he suffers serious, lasting physical consequences and, more importantly, loses his moral compass entirely and ends up butchering a teenaged girl in what amounts to a political misunderstanding. One of the running themes is that T'Challa fears this --at one point, Storm tells him his ill-considered reliance on stoicism threatens to turn him into another Magneto -- and by the end of he essentially has turned into a well-intentioned extremist/knight templar like Magneto because of his desire to control everyone else for their own good, and his refusal to show what he considers human weakness. The run as a whole is a sort of sideways commentary on the Batman-as-living-god take on "characters of privilege.****

Running that arc with the Panther does have some of its own Unfortunate Implications, of course. It may have worked better when Charlie Huston did it with Moon Knight. But Hudlin tended to make the character into little more than a race-lifted imitation of the fannish vision for white privilege characters I mentioned above, and I really don't think that's a solution any more than, say, the resort to forms of anticolonial violence that mirror colonial uses of violence has ever been a solution to colonialism.

Best,*****
Kris

* I may never forgive Whitney Ellsworth for his refusal to let Lois figure out the secret and react appropriately, maturely, and even heroically as Joe Siegel intended. 60 years later, that somewhat more egalitarian premise for their relationship been proven to work quite well.

** Boring, condescending lecture I give freshmen on utopia, please skip : not a road map to utopia, since super-powers don't really exist and simple force doesn't really work, but rather a fantasy image with which one can codify and express the values that we, in our world where eutopia is outopia, should aspire to more pragmatically. The vision of utopia is unattainable, but it also provides license to benign and progressive aspirations, license I think is necessary. Western culture's loss of the utopia as a genre -- almost none have been written since the early modern period -- is not necessarily a good thing. Utopian visions do need to be interrogated fiercely, however; part of their value is also that they invite such critiques, that utopian narratives require dystopian responses, which in turn require reconstructive utopianisms. in other words, dialectic. (Freshman lecture is now over.)

*** I can't remember if you'd already cited it, but if not you should add Priest's Panther to your list of characters who defy neurotypical norms; the character ends up with a brain aneurysm late in the run as part of the title's deconstruction of superhero tropes. In this case, it's a realistic consequence of the standard "underdog" superhero fight where Our Hero rallies from a savage beating and wins in the end.

***** David Foster Wallace did this so much better than anyone else. I miss him.

Hal "Otacon" Emmerich, Metal Gear Solid's Autistic Hero?

2011-04-23T20:02:00.000-07:00

Fictional characters on the autism spectrum are hard to find, and good characters in that category are almost non-existent. As autism has become more prevalent, we've seen it portrayed more often in the media, but those portrayals too often fall into the stereotypes, such as the damaged, volatile child unwittingly tearing apart his supportive family, or the emotionless polymath sociopath who can do horrible things without seeing a problem. There are very few autistic protagonists, or even supporting characters of a positive nature*.

Thus, many autistic people have found themselves speculating on which of their favorite fictional characters fit the spectrum, following the completely understandable need to see inspiring figures to fit into their own narrative world. Sometimes these fictional diagnoses are simple wish fulfillment that don't describe the diagnosed character at all, such as claiming that Severus Snape of Harry Potter has Asperger's Syndrome**. Others are much more accurate, such as Grant Morrison's in-universe speculation that Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four is autistic, and could (and should) be incorporated into canon.

An example of the latter is Hal "Otacon" Emmerich, Solid Snake's tech-guy sidekick in the Metal Gear Solid series of video games. Otacon's spectrum traits go beyond simply being a nerd, and put him squarely in the neuroatypical category. If you don't believe me, here's the evidence...

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE GAMES AHEAD

1.) Otacon's interests are (or were) so obsessive and insular that he missed the harsh realities attached. When he was introduced in the PSOne game, he was designing a Metal Gear unit because he wanted to make robots like he'd seen in anime. He was attached to that utopian sci-fi narrative, the kind where fantastical machines keep people safe. He was also completely oblivious to the fact that his creation was being used as a platform for nuclear missiles, until Snake bluntly spelled it out for him. Otacon's code-name is short for "Otaku Convention", and his desk is covered with little toys and posters. In another series, he might have been able to play out his fantasies and help the world with his giant robot fixation. In Metal Gear, of course, he became instrumental in the creation of the world's most devastating WMD.

2.) Otacon is extremely literal-minded. This is used with hilarious effect in the Snake campaign of Metal Gear Solid 2, where the good doctor tries to read Snake ancient words of wisdom upon saving his data (the way Mei Ling did in the previous game). Unfortunately, he completely misses the point of those famous quotes, and comes up with extremely bizarre interpretations after taking them at face value. The phrase "It's better to be first among roosters instead of last among bulls", according to Otacon, means that it's better to be a chicken because cows are subjected to alien cattle mutilations.

3.) Otacon is TERRIBLE at understanding his relationships. The extent to which he does not comprehend others' intentions (or his own, for that matter) leads to some of the most tragic scenes in a series known for its depressing tone. In MGS1, Otacon falls for Sniper Wolf, a bloodthirsty sniper and one of the terrorists holding him hostage. It is unlikely that she reciprocates beyond a show of basic decency (as he helped feed her dogs), but Otacon takes this mercy and uses it to fuel his childish crush. It's touchingly pathetic how fast-- and how hard-- he falls for Wolf, especially after her demise at the hands of Solid Snake. And we see it happen again in MGS4, when the morally ambiguous Dr. Naomi Hunter seduces Otacon so she can get data needed for a larger plan. The ease with which she manipulates him, saying all the right words about atoning for the sins of her science to create a quick emotional bond, is disturbing to watch when you know what she's up to.

The is explored in MGS2, where we learn about Otacon's past-- he was always socially isolated, and his sole companions were the family his father married-- his step-sister and step-mother. He became strongly attached to the former and even played house with her, despite the fact that she was five years old and he was a teenager (though Otacon had no salacious intentions spending so much time with the little girl-- he just wanted to experience family). Unfortunately, he was also "seduced"*** by his step-mother, which led to his father's suicide and Otacon subsequently running away from home. We don't hear much about the details other than Otacon's words (which are words of contrition, blaming himself for all of this), but it's unlikely that he understood what was going on at that point-- his inherent lack of social awareness facilitated all these tragedies.

There's also the fact that by far Otacon's strongest relationship is with Snake, as the two men work and live together, and even end up adopting a child in MGS4. The homoerotic subtext is so thick that it basically ends up as text, but it's not exactly clear if Otacon's feelings for Snake are romantic. He likely doesn't understand what he feels for Snake, other than the intensity of the connection. The sensitive nerd and the dour super-soldier end up having quite a bit in common, as seen in the "bad" ending**** of MGS1. Both are profoundly isolated human beings, even if Otacon's loneliness is more internalized than his lab-grown, shell-shocked veteran partner.

4.) Most importantly, Otacon is a complex and sympathetic character. As I said before, when autistic characters are shown in most fiction, they're shown in terms of stereotypes and plot devices. But Otacon grows and changes over the course of Metal Gear Solid, and provides a vital pillar of strength. He's the most genuinely decent character in the entire series, surpassed only by The Boss from the prequel MGS3. And The Boss is the series' messiah figure, so it's not really a contest.

When we first see Otacon, it's as a messy-haired, badly-dressed, bespectacled little dork . His first appearance is hardly auspicious, as he's wetting himself in terror when confronted by a crazed cyborg ninja. But he shows tremendous courage later in the game, taking full accountability for his part in Metal Gear's creation and risking his life to shut it down. In the second game, he's Snake's tech-guy and half of the anti-Metal Gear organization Philanthropy, working to destroy those robotic WMDs despite the risk to his personal safety. He's also become more attractive and well-dressed, though still a bit dorky looking. And by MGS4, Otacon has developed a rugged handsomeness that puts him square in Hot Scientist territory. Poor hygiene is a common trait in autistic people, but it's not an insurmountable habit-- Otacon proves this.

But most importantly, Otacon is by Snake's side during all these ordeals. Snake is the action hero of Metal Gear Solid, the one putting his life on the line at every turn. But Snake couldn't be anywhere near as successful without Otacon's support. In MGS4, Snake has prematurely aged due to his cloned physiology breaking down, and has only a few months left to live. Otacon's tech is the only thing allowing Snake to survive on the battlefield; the strength-boosting Octocamo suit was Otacon's invention, as were the vision-enhancing Solid Eye and the helper robot "Metal Gear Mark 2" (redeeming the machine's tainted name). But Otacon's greatest act comes at the end of the game, when the still-dying Snake is wondering what he has left to live for in the new world, and Otacon promises to bear witness to Snake's final days. Otacon refuses to let Snake die alone and unloved.

I doubt Hideo Kojima created Otacon with autism in mind, but if the autism label is attached to the character, it not only fits him but helps eradicate many of the negative stereotypes.

* INSERT OBLIGATORY RUBY'S WORLD LINK
** There's no evidence for this in the books, other than Snape being a thoroughly repulsive human being-- and that's just proof that he's a repulsive human being, even if he didn't prove outright evil.
*** Otacon's words. But it's a clear case of rape, and one of the few instances where female-on-male rape is shown to be just as bad.
**** In which female love interest Meryl doesn't survive, and is replaced by Otacon as Snake's symbolic reason to keep on living.

I Was A Jewish Norse God

2011-04-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

Back in 1995, I attended fourth grade at a private school where we got to study the Norse myths. This culminated in a school play at the end of the semester, where the class played different gods. I was cast as Heimdall, guardian of the rainbow bridge Bifrost. Granted, this wasn't a significant part, as I was basically just the narrator who opened up the scenes for the other students. But I didn't see any reason why I wouldn't be Heimdall, and I still got to wear a paper mache horned helmet and wield a wooden sword.

It is also worth noting that I am partially of Jewish descent, and I don't recall hearing of Jewish people who worshipped Pagan pantheons. Similarly, I don't recall any African-Americans in the Norse myths, as many have pointed out regarding the casting of Idris Elba as Heimdall in the upcoming Thor movie.

Another thing I don't recall is anyone in the audience of that school play complaining about the casting of a Jewish student as Heimdall. If they did, they would be seen as completely foolish and/or bigoted.

So do you see where I'm going with this?

Goliath Vs. Thor: Hasbro Retells A Bad Joke In Plastic Form

2011-04-20T06:02:00.000-07:00

To make matters worse, it also comes with a copy of Civil War #4, the issue where Clor does indeed kill Bill Foster. At least in the reprinted Hasbro version, the line about Sue making love to Reed one last time before leaving him on ethical grounds is removed. Shame they couldn't do so with, y'know, the rest of the comic.

Ruby's World: Requiem For A Webcomic

2011-04-11T22:19:00.000-07:00

After 39 pages of Ruby's World Finale, it's still not over yet! Ruby's World: Requiem is here, and I'm still taking my time to wrap up the story. Given how I just killed the protagonist's father, there had to be a proper emotional sendoff. Expect more text explaining how we got to this point, followed by a funeral.

The Ruby Nation is still coming, and it's been baptized in the previous generation's blood.

(Also, this is my blog's 100th post. Hooray!)

Sucker Punch Movie Review: God of War Meets Showgirls

2011-04-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

I usually don't talk about movies on this blog, but given how terrible this movie was both as a Geek Culture film and a case of representations, I'm making an exception.

Sucker Punch, directed by Zack Snyder, is the kind of movie that makes people cringe when they hear the word "Deconstruction". It's the sort of screenplay (also written in part by Snyder) that you would expect from a college freshman who was just given academic permission to incorporate sex into his stories. I saw it because it looked so drastically different from usual Hollywood fantasy fare that I felt compelled to see it, especially when I heard about the madness angle. I admit I wasn't expecting much, but I wasn't expecting something that made the Twilight movies look like a class act.

The story uses the "dream within a dream" device, taking place on three planes of existence. The heroine is a girl called only Baby-Doll (played by Emily Browning), who is institutionalized after she tries to kill her rapist stepfather (and ends up shooting her little sister by mistake). Abused in the asylum and threatened with a lobotomy, she creates a fantasy world where she's a prostitute at a brothel. At the brothel, Baby-Doll teams up with similarly-named prostitutes Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Amber (Jamie Chung), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Rocket (Jena Malone) to formulate an escape before they're sold off to the "High Roller" (played by Jon "Don Draper" Hamm, who has kind of ruined Mad Men for me thanks to his association with this POS). Their escape plan hinges on Baby-Doll distracting clients with her dance, where she slips into the the third level of the dream-- a fantasy adventure where the girls wear leather and battle monstrous foes.

This all takes place in the 1950's (which has become a safe period for movies dealing with cultural repression), and even the action scenes draw on a variety of anachronisms. Those scenes, the scenes which are used in almost all of the marketing, have the girls follow video-game style mission objectives as they fight samurai, zombie nazis, orcs, and robots. If pirates and Chuck Norris were involved, this would offer a complete set of internet shorthands for cool. These scenes are reasonably entertaining, though the fact that the cinematography is borrowed so heavily from video games holds them back. They're moments that would be fun if you were controlling the girls, but are so devoid of narrative weight that they're useless when simply watched. Even cutscene-heavy video games ideally leave the action to the playable parts, and leave the footage for character development-- Metal Gear Solid being the best example, as that game's cutscenes often have a subdued tone and several layers of meaning.

The real problem with the story is the "real world", especially filtered through the intermediary that is the brothel world. The characters have little to no personality; Amber and Blondie are near-complete ciphers, and the only traits seen in Sweet Pea and Rocket are that they're big sister and little sister. Baby Doll may be the protagonist, but her reactions don't go any further than the situations-- she hates her captors, wants to help her fellow inmates/prostitutes/action heroines, and doesn't like being raped. The emotional range portrayed by all the girls ranges from "angry at rapists" to "crying over having been raped", with occasional moments of sisterly solidarity between them. Most writing teachers will tell you that tears should be saved for a character's greatest trials, because if you use the waterworks too much, you run the risk of sappy melodrama. When dealing with a concept as horrific as rape, sappy melodrama is the last thing you want, but it's here in spades.

The fact that the real world is the mental hospital is what really sinks the movie for me, because physical/sexual abuse of mental patients IS a real problem, and it doesn't just happen to those with movie starlet looks. And while the elaborate fantasy sequences of Baby-Doll may be what give her strength to stick to the escape plan, they aren't the sort of fantasies her character (such as it is). While this is allegedly set in the 1950s, the brothel and the video game sequences are clearly motivated by the male gaze-- even when fighting orcs and Nazis instead of pimps and johns, the girls wear skimpy fetish gear and use symbolically phallic weaponry (big guns, big swords, big mechs). Snyder has said that this is his commentary on the nature of fantasy, that it's "girls performing for men in the dark". Except that he's doing a movie with female stars, so the girls should be able to behave as the subjects, not the objects. In a bizarre way, the film catastrophically fails the Bechdel Test, because while all the protagonists are female, all their dialogue is talking about the males (even if the males are the bad guys).

Snyder has taken the language of comic books, video games, and other geek culture paraphernalia, but he hasn't given us any substance with it. His observations about voyeurism and rape as a means of asserting dominance are the kind that can be found in any Media Studies 101 class. The rest is, as Chris Rosa told me prior to seeing this movie, like a Hollywood executive's superficial understanding of the San Diego ComiCon floor show, used as an attempt to make a deep statement with a very shallow thought process.

The only way I would recommend you see this is if you were watching for the purposes of doing an insulting review a la the Nostalgia Critic. Because this kind of story, a story with big ambitions but lazy craft, is the perfect target for such derision.

Sonichu Episode Critical Review, Two: Attack of the Clones

2011-04-02T23:25:00.000-07:00

The density of awfulness within these comics is getting harder to address in single entries, so I'm probably going to be splitting up these reviews in the future.

Naitsirhc's eviller/gayer form may be the most disturbing new character in Episode 14, but there's another addition to the cast who says more about Christian Weston Chandler. Bionic the Hedgehog debuts in this chapter, and gives us a glimpse at what Chandler's creative process was like ten years ago.

While it would be statistically impossible for Chandler to come up with worse ideas than Sonichu, it's not like Bionic was much better.

Bionic the Hedgehog is basically Sonic with orange fur and an affinity for basketball. There are no other characteristics to the little creature, other than the fact that he can throw the orange ball hard enough to knock Chris-Chan's evil twin into a temporary coma. Bionic is only notable because he was the first character Chris-Chan came up with, only ripping off one property instead of two.

Chris-Chan visits Bionic because, through deus ex machina (the internal driving force behind Sonichu's story), he goes back in time to his high school days. This is part of the search for the Sonichu Balls or something*, but the real reason Chandler takes his fictional self back in time is for personal gratification. High school was a better time for Chandler than anything since, and the further he gets from those days.

However, all this does for anyone else is illuminate how little Christian Weston Chandler has possessed. Back in the 1990s, he was drawing rip-offs of Sonic characters. A decade later, he's still doing it. But back then this could be forgiven as the result of inexperience and perhaps a coping mechanism. As a grown man, this is downright pathetic.

Even more pathetic is the fact that instead of moving on from Bionic, Chandler feels compelled to work the waste of orange Crayola ink into his current projects. The only way this could have worked would be if it was meta-commentary on Chandler's creative process, comparing and contrasting the progress (such as it is) between Bionic and Sonichu, but it reads as a compulsive need for Chandler to validate everything he's done, with no room for admitting mistakes or reconsidering his direction.

Even worse is the fact that Bionic was Chandler's main weapon in his 1999 "War on Autism". Chandler has made it clear that he wants a cure for autism, and would not hesitate to shed his neurological "curse". Ironic, as Chandler has built so much of his identity around being a victim of autism, and if he were cured, he would no longer have any excuses for his behavior. Granted, he doesn't have any excuses now, at least in the eyes of anyone but his decrepit parents and the state of Virginia.

* (Which gave us the immortal line, "My Two Balls!". Chandler has since retconned them into the Sonichu Crystals.

Sonichu Episode 14 Critical Review, Part One: If Fred Phelps Had A Webcomic

2011-03-31T15:10:00.000-07:00

(Broken in to two parts, due to two divergent subjects)

After a vacation in Seattle and some new work, I realize I've again neglected this series. Sure, Christian Weston Chandler may be neglecting his own webcomic (as well as his own life), but there's still lots of unintentional meaning to be extracted from his magnum opus Sonichu. And here's where one of Chandler's greatest enemies enters the picture-- the notion that a man can love another man.

Naitsirhc, the evil twin of Christian, enters the picture in this episode. He too has had a makeover, complete with a medallion that allows him to transform into a super-powered electric hedgehog. However, Naitsirch is more evil than ever, which in Chandler's mind, means he's gayer than ever. So he debuts with a costume featuring a black codpiece, a dog collar, and green leather straps across his torso. Upon seeing this, Chris screams "Oh my Dog", offended into near-catatonia as his fantasies "blow towards the opposite gender".

Because he's now gay, Naitsirch is even more evil to the point where Black Sonichu joins Chris-Chan to rebel against his 'fallen' master. Naitsirch's evil, which is largely informed and not really justified, makes him surpass even Mary Lee Walsh and Count Graduon as a symbol of The Bad in CWCVille. So what does this say about Chandler?

The most obvious guess is that Naitsirhc represents Chandler's homosexual tendencies, as Chris-Chan reacts with such horror at the guy's very appearance. Chandler hates gays, which might be part of his family's fundamentalist background, but an actual methodology to his bigotry isn't apparent. His criticisms against gays are purely a matter of aesthetics-- he considers them icky, without questioning why. If he did, he might see something in himself that he wouldn't want to admit.

There are plenty of gender issues at play with Christian Weston Chandler, as we see throughout his history. He doesn't associate with other males (except for the imaginary hedgehog kind), and he goes on about his many "gal-pals" back in high school. He has quite a bit of jewelry, albeit in the form of anime paraphernalia like his custom medallion. And he uses imagery like hearts and rainbows that he got from shojo manga-- i.e. manga for young girls. Then there's the "recycling" thing, which I'm not going to get into but is a pretty convincing example.

On the other hand, if we're going by stereotypical gender characteristics, Chandler is obsessed with getting "China"**, uses brutal physical violence to defeat his enemies in Sonichu, and has no interest in keeping clean and tidy (to the point of not changing his clothes, even in the comic). So while he's not totally straight, he's not totally gay either; like everyone, he's somewhere between the two extremes.

No, the reaction against Naitsirch is more about Chandler's fear of anything different. To Chandler, gays are not what he knows as natural; he believes that relationships are between a man and a woman, and he clings to this belief so hard that he expels any other types of relationship. His idea of true love is Sonichu and Rosechu, characters who are in a happy, conflict-free coupling with nothing contesting their societal standing. Naitsirch in his transformed state is not interested in women, so he doesn't fit into Chandler's worldview.

Ideologically, Chandler acts like he's immunocompromised. Anything new and potentially risky gets into his bubble, and he reacts with violent outrage.

* You don't want to know, trust me.
** His euphemism for the female genitalia. This is both an example of how Chandler uses funny words to cover up uncomfortable mature subjects, and how he has no understanding of other cultures beyond the surface and doesn't plan to learn.

Ruby's World Post-Script: Take That, Neil Kapit

2011-03-20T20:46:00.000-07:00

The Pages In Question, Here and Here

One of the most frustrating things about doing long-form series fiction is that when you create a character or idea who seems less and less interesting in practice, you're usually forced to continue with that. One of the most rewarding things about long-form series fiction is that as you keep going and your universe develops, you can find ways to remake that character or idea into something to fit the increased complexity of your framework.

I started doing Ruby's World over 2 and a half years ago, so at the time I thought that the most compelling villains were those who were just pure evil to the Nth degree. Hence, the physical face of Beagle was Buzarde', who I wrote as more and more deranged with each appearance. It was fun to write a character that was every inch a depraved serial killer, but it didn't make him a very interesting character to others.

I would hardly be the first person to make this mistake, as many writers enjoy creating Complete Monster villains. Even now, I can still appreciate the appeal. However, ideally even those bad guys have some kind of viewpoint with some appeal beyond the complete release of impulses. If you're writing an antagonist who doesn't have any kind of hook other than pure nihilism, you're not really challenging the protagonists' morals, just their skills and physical abilities. Certainly there are very few people in reality who actually see themselves as the bad guy, despite their actions.

So, dissatisfied with what I'd done, I came up with a solution that would break the Fourth Wall to make Buzarde' more compelling; a villain who was literally designed for evil, and failed at it. Then he's kind of a pathetic figure because he can't help the way he is. Not only was he constructed only to do evil, but he wasn't even good at it. And his impulse to torture when he should just execute turned out to be a flaw in his effectiveness, something an instrumentalist villain like Dr. Carcharria would not tolerate.

In the new world of the Ruby Nation, villains so simple have no place as a credible threat. This is me symbolically outgrowing those past mistakes.

Sonichu Episode 12.5 Critical Review: No. No. No. No. No.

2011-03-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

Damn it, Chris, you can't even make this sympathetic

This is the single most unsettling chapter of Sonichu. It's not the most disturbing, the most grotesque, or even the most pathetic. In terms of story quality, it's probably the best thing Christian Weston Chandler has written. It's the only Sonichu story where Chandler actually conveys real, heartfelt sadness. Instead of obsessing over his latest 'sweetheart', or railing against people who've slighted him, Chandler is mourning the passing of his dog Patti. He's deeply sad that a creature who loved him unconditionally is gone from his life, a creature who treated him with the caring and respect that nobody else had ever given him.

The bizarre, disturbing way in which he deals with this real loss is what makes Sonichu 12.5 so unpleasant to read.

A bizarre mix of photography and drawings (which highlights the crude, scribbly nature of Chandler's drawings a thousandfold), the comic opens with Patti the dog mourning her aging and wishing for the opportunity to talk, so she could finally tell Chris-Chan how much she loves him. The next morning, she wakes up and finds herself an anthropomorphic creature with green markings on her head, able to talk. Chris-Chan (who is represented by his photographed real self) greets her and gives her a "makeover" of a green mini-skirt and jewelry, and takes her to a place where she can run free and happy for eternity. They take a shortcut through Chris-Chan's room, about which Patti notes the need for a woman's touch.

Chris-Chan agrees, as will anyone else who sees the room. It's cluttered wall to wall with Transformers, video games, anime DVDs, and Legos. Patti's comment that the room needs a woman's touch ignores the fact that Chandler could clean the room himself, donate or even sell off a lot of the children's toys he bought with taxpayer money, and create a space that isn't a candidate for an episode of Hoarders. But that's how Chandler thinks about his Love Quest; self-improvement comes after he finds the woman willing to put up with him, not before.

But this wretched hive of scum and arrested development gives way to an even worse place, as Patti is taken CWCVille and offered a seat in the mayor's office. Here we meet Alison Amber, Chris-Chan's secretary. She's similar to Pepper Potts, in that she does all the administrative work while her boss plays superhero-- or in Chris-Chan's case, beats up people who slighted him and ogles women clearly not interested. Also, Alison has an (ugh, he says) boyfriend, so she won't have any sexual tension with Chris-Chan. All she'll do is keep CWCVille running in his stead, which includes offering sanctuary to Patti (now Patti-Chan, as she has the deus ex machina powers and vaguely Japanese-sounding names common to the Sonichus).

Yes, Chandler is keeping his dog's spirit alive as a furry playmate in his imaginary utopia. He cannot accept that she's dead, so he's brought her likeness into CWCVille, his home away from reality. And his retreat from the rest of the world continues, as the only being who ever truly loved him has emigrated to his imaginary space.

Some people have commented that by bringing Patti into CWCVille, Chris-Chan is preventing her from passing on to the afterlife and keeping her in a state of purgatory (or hell, given how it's CWCVille). The sad part is that I can understand Chandler's motivations, and even sympathize with them. I've lost beloved dogs too, and it took me a long time to get over their passing. The death of Terra, the Kapit family's Australian Shepherd, still hurts when I think about it. But dogs don't live forever, and as hard as it is to accept the loss, it happened, and all that's left to do is move on. I can even see Chandler's logic, how giving Patti a new conceptual home would give her peace and allow him to move on.

But CWCVille isn't a space of moving on. It's a hideous Neverland Ranch free from the discomforts of adulthood, progress, and experience. It's a place where arguments are represented by turning the opposite side into a cackling supervillain, children's toys are imbued with WMD levels of power, and even the notion of mortality is optional. Instead of growing from his trauma, Chris-Chan has magically hand-waved the problem into obscurity, so that as long as he retreats from reality, he and Patti can live happily ever after.

Which would be benignly tragic is Chandler just stayed in his imaginary world. But he wants to share CWCVille and Sonichu with the Internet, and become rich and famous off of his Frankensteinian mash-ups of other characters. So CWCVille floats around Chandler as a badly-drawn balloon attached by umbilical cord, and every time he retreats to it in light of his real-world failures, it contorts (or more precisely, distorts) to accommodate the needs of a man-boy refusing to move forward in stronger and stronger fashion.

Even Christian Weston Chandler's real, heartfelt tragedies are undermined by the rest of his bizarre life.

Sonichu Episode 13 Critical Review: Frank Lloyd Wrong

2011-03-09T16:52:00.000-08:00

Because Mall Are Such Great Political Offices

It's really hard to think of Christian Weston Chandler as a creator in any sense of the word other than the most technical. Though he does write (badly) and draw (badly), his characters are all plagiarized from his childhood fandoms, he never expanded his tastes beyond what he enjoyed as a kid, and his plots consist of his real-world personal problems repurposed to make him look better. But all of that wouldn't be so damning were it not for the fact that he refuses to learn from his mistakes, or even acknowledge that he makes them.

This is still the phase where Chandler is obsessed with Megan Schroeder, to the point of telling Sonichu about his love for her. Sonichu, dutiful imaginary son that he is, says that he and all the other electric hedgehogs wish Chris-Chan the best of luck. But before Chris-Chan can convene with his entire council of imaginary friends, he discovers that Mary Lee Walsh has waged her latest assault on the emotion of love. He learns of this thanks to an announcement on the CWCVille Radio by DJ Jamsta Sonichu (SERIOUSLY), who interrupts the latest Anime Hits block to break the news. Ideally Chris-Chan would actually pay attention to what's going on in his city, so the station could finish playing Nakagawa Shouko's "Sora iro Days" from Gurren Lagann. However, there's no time for something more interesting, because Chris-Chan has to remind us that the real police wear Black and Blue, while the evil Jerkop impostors wear brown.

Chris-Chan makes this arbitrary distinction to indicate that he doesn't have a problem with authority in general, just when they try to cock-block him. And he does that to himself better than anyone else could.

Anyway, Chris-Chan tracks down Mary Lee Walsh with his special Sonichu DS, which is a hi-tech satellite surveillance system in this universe (though presumably it didn't inform him about Walsh's return before the radio announcement, presumably because he had it in Sleep Mode amidst a game of Pokemon Platinum. This is another unintentionally symbolic representation of CWCVille's ethos; the mayor is too busy living out his childish fantasies that his main line of communication to his constituents is first and foremost his handheld game console. But Chris-Chan and Sonichu are pretending that they have no time to lose, so they jet over (Chris-Chan on a hoverboard) in one of the most atrocious uses of perspective in human history.

They're joined by the Chaotic Combo and Crystal Weston Chandler, but face Mary Lee Walsh's latest minion; CADD Chef Keneru Meneth. And this is a new middle for Christian Weston Chandler (as his lows are so improbably low).

Keneru Meneth is based on Kene Meniru, Chandler's Computer-Aided Drafting and Design teacher at Piedmont Virginia Community College. Meniru apparently gave Chandler an F on his CWCVille Mall class project. Most students would have taken this as a sign that they needed to change something, because what they submit didn't fit the class guidelines. Chandler, of course, not only recycles the hideous mayoral mall for his webcomic without any improvements to its haphazard structure, but makes his teacher into a giant monster partially modified off of Chef from South Park.

Chandler picked Chef, a parodically stereotypical black man, as the inspiration for his portrayal of the black Kene Meniru. It's established that Chandler has a very narrow range of tastes, and that toilet humor-featuring animated sitcoms like Family Guy and South Park are about as "mature" as he likes to venture. It's also established that Chandler is (despite his claims to the contrary) somewhat racist, even though he'll deny it. And Chandler has never created a unique character that doesn't have grafted, Frankensteinian parts from other materials. So the only black character he knew to steal was Chef, down to "Hey there Chicos" as a catchphrase (derivative of Hey There Children).

Chandler doesn't call himself racist, and probably doesn't even see himself as bigoted against other races (though gender issues are another matter). But bigotry transfers through ignorance, through people repeating stereotypes and acting before reflecting. Chandler's knowledge of non-white people (given how his main fandoms are Japanese childrens' shows with non-racial or even non-human worlds) comes from these adult-audience animated sitcoms, but his field of interests so narrow and fixed that he probably isn't even aware of African-American identities outside of Chef and Cleveland Brown from South Park-- and Cleveland wouldn't work as well as a giant, rampaging monster.

I can't call Chandler a creator, but I can call him an ideological contortionist. His talent is finding ways to distort and dismember reality to fit his worldview. He takes a teacher who gave him a bad grade for his lazily-constructed CWCVille Mall and makes him a giant monster and racial stereotype. He takes Megan, a woman who was willing to be his friend but not much more, and makes her lack of attraction to him due to inner turmoil and a troubled past that Chandler doesn't bother to explain. And this doesn't even touch his depiction of Mary Lee Walsh.

At least he admits that the Attraction Sign was a bad idea, but it's a case of one step forward and a hundred backwards.

28 Days of Black Superheroes, By John Garrett

2011-03-07T13:08:00.000-08:00

Last Black History Month, John Garrett of Hypertransitory did an amazing project with his 28 Days of Black Superheroes. He drew fan art of each character chosen, while writing up an analysis of the different heroes. Included were 28 great essays like the difference between WNF and BNF, the problems with Storm, and the insights behind his own character, Kid Hype.

I happened to win the 20X30 Poster of all 28 Characters, so I'm going to do my best to return the favor. Check the site out here.

Sonichu Episode 12 Critical Review: The Union Of Perversion And Despair

2011-03-03T19:48:00.000-08:00

Four Failures And A Wedding

Recently I was asked how I can justify criticizing online fans for making personal attacks on creators, yet do these Sonichu reviews. It's probably because I'm not really insulting Christian Weston Chandler, or denying him any professional or personal respect due. I'm not evaluating his comic critically so much as analyzing the Chris-Chan phenomenon, trying to draw some kind of meaning from the trip into one man's personal hell that is Sonichu. Nothing I could say or do would demean Chandler any more than he already demeans himself.

A good example of said self-demeaning is Sonichu Episode 12, titled "My Best Friend's Cherokian Wedding". In a rare move of internal consistency, Chandler has acknowledged the continued existence of Sarah Hammer, his childhood friend, unrequited infatuation, and super-furry comrade from earlier installments. Fortunately for the real-world Sarah, she's moved on with her life and has married a new man (having broken up with Wes Iseli, a.k.a. the evil Wes-Li Sonichu from the Wasabi Clan). Unfortunately for the real-world Sarah, the ceremony has been pulled into CWCVille, and interpreted through Chandler's arrested egotism.

At least Chris-Chan has stopped hitting on Sarah, but that's because he has a new sweetheart, one Megan Schroder. In real life, Megan was a girl he met at card game tournaments who was willing to be friends with him, but not go any further. Chandler repeatedly ignored her wishes, working her into his comic, getting inappropriately touch with her, and even putting erotic artwork of the two online (the latter being the final nail in the coffin, obviously). This comic was made when Chandler was infatuated with Megan, so he's deliberately worked Megan's interests into Sonichu in order to impress her-- not only does everyone now have anime-style eyes, but Chris-Chan uses Yu-Gi-Oh cards as weapons against his enemies, and has even cast bit characters (such as Sarah's husband-to-be) as Yu-Gi-Oh monsters. This doesn't particularly disrupt the flow of the narrative (such as it is), because everything in Sonichu is already filtered through the lens of Chris-Chan's childhood fandoms, despite dealing with his struggle against growing up. It's likely that Chandler simply didn't bother with drawing from a photo of Jack Spicer, instead tracing a Yu-Gi-Oh card within his immediate grasp.

I have never played Yu-Gi-Oh and have only seen a few episodes of the anime, so I can't speak to how badly he's mauled the source material. What is clear to everyone else, however, is that a fantasy card game does not offer one the tools to negotiate relationships and deal with developmental milestones. Here, Chandler has set up circumstances so there's a clear villain (Wes-Li Sonichu, crashing his ex's wedding to kidnap her), and a clear method to take him down. It also is supposed Chandler look good, for not doing what Wes-Li is doing despite being similarly obsessed with Sarah. Finally, the acknowledgement of Chandler's heroism gives him hope from the cast that he'll one day get a girlfriend-- Megan (as Sailor Megtune, with Sailor Moon-type powers and an anthropomorphic skunk sidekick named Megagi) rescues him from a defeat at the hands of Wes-Li, and Sarah gives him her blessing, throwing the bouqet of flowers to him in the hopes that he'll one day be getting married (and hoping that it'll be to Megan).

Megan, being a young woman with a reasonable grasp on reality, wasn't won over by being inserted into a newly anime-ized Sonichu comic as the protagonist's (eventual?) love interest. It just got worse from there.

I should also note that Wes-Li calls Chris-Chan an autistic freak, despite the fact that Chandler's avatar does not associate with autism in any way, shape, or form. This is true for Chandler's own understanding of autism as well; he hasn't bothered to actually negotiate or even understand what it means. All he admits is that it's a label that can be blamed for everything that doesn't go well in his life.

Superman/Batman: Apocalypse: Lolita of Steel

2011-02-27T16:21:00.000-08:00

Stanley Kubrick was one of the most accomplished and innovative directors in the history of film. One of his most interesting feats was the fact that he made a film of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, and under the MPAA's totalitarian Hayes Code no less. While Kubrick wasn't satisfied with the way the thoroughly censored adaptation turned out, he did manage to create a film riddled with sexual suggestion. If he couldn't do a film that explicitly told the pedophile's story, then he'd find plenty of ways to hint at Humbert Humbert's lust for a 14-year-old girl*, using careful direction to show the character's gravitation towards Lolita (and her reciprocation) without actually stating it.

Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, the animated adaptation of Jeph Loeb and the late Michael Turner's Supergirl reboot, works the same way, except the disturbing implications AREN'T intentional. And that's why it went from just being a lame movie to an outright disturbing one.

The story centers around Kara Zor-El, Superman's teenaged cousin from Krypton. Its plot, typical of a Jeph Loeb story, is a frenetic jump between various action sequences without much plot connecting them. All of the instances follow Kara trying to find a place to fit in, given the destruction of her homeworld. She arrives on Earth completely naked, witnessed by some construction workers who try to rape her (big mistake, given her super-powers). From there we see her trying different identities influenced by the adults guiding her. It's worth noting that she meets few if any other teenagers, and is the sole icon of youth and inexperience amidst a cast of grown-ups. It's also worth noting that each time she tries out an identity, Kara gets a new set of clothes that invariably fails to adequately clothe her. For example...

-- When Clark Kent takes Kara in, he takes her shopping. As Kara becomes assimilated in an improbably quick fashion (because apparently teenaged girls across all cultures take to conspicuous consumption like a duck to water), she tries on a bunch of trashy outfits, while Clark looks on with a raised eyebrow and a stern expression at his younger cousin's choices.

-- When Wonder Woman decides that Kara would best grow up on Paradise Island with other super-powered women, she takes to the Amazon wardrobe of leather body armor (and not much of it). Though Kara bonds with the Amazonians, she's still clearly the youngest there, taken in with a firm, trusting, and blatantly homoerotic hand from Lilah (a.k.a. Harbringer).

-- After being kidnapped and brainwashed by Darkseid, Kara wears a really trashy black leather ensemble, using the time-honored tradition of using leather fetish gear to evoke eeevil.

-- Finally, once she and Clark defeat Darkseid and return, Kara's "independent choice" is to become Supergirl, with a bared madriff and improbably short skirt.

The last one is the nail in the coffin; even Kara's final decision has her dressed in her paternal figure's colors, but skewed to emphasize her youth and sexuality. Worst of all, the character design clearly imitates Michael Turner's version. While I hate to speak ill of the dead and don't think Turner was a bad human being at all, his version of Supergirl was especially troubling. She had no body fat, a very thin bone structure, and an elongated torso to show off her belly button. Turner's Kara was an anorexic with big breasts attached.

To be fair, the scenes on Paradise Island keep Apocalypse from failing the Blechdel Test, because Kara and Lilah talk about things other then men. However, Kara is still the lone teenager in a cast of adults, and every wardrobe change has her re-interpreted through the lens of an adult's sublimated fantasies. Be they the outfits Clark outwardly disapproves of, the dominatrix getup Darkseid assigns, or the miniskirt outfit with branding borrowed from Superman, Kara is only given an identity in the context of others. And this wouldn't be so troubling if Kara actually looked and acted like a real girl, instead of a middle aged man's sexualized interpretation.

Needless to say, I didn't like this movie and thought it a waste of the talent of Summer Glau. I hope she gets a voice-over role soon that is closer to the complex characters she's known for playing, as opposed to an emaciated underage superloli.

BOTTOM 10 'Favorite' Tropes: Blog-a-Day, Pt 3

2011-02-26T20:21:00.001-08:00

The final entry for my own TVTropes answers, featuring tropes that I usually (or never) can stand...

Misaimed Fandom: When what a fan wants becomes so important to them that they'll ignore or dismiss anything contrary, they've closed off their mind to everything. It's not just a failure of individual thought, but it holds back personal growth and development. Pretty much any fandom trope can fall under here, so I'll leave it at that instead of filling the list with Draco in Leather Pants, Opinion Myopia, Ruined FOREVER, etc.

Status Quo Is God: Particularly damning in franchise superhero comics, where the notion that everything will reset makes every new development seem like a temporary diversion. But if you're going to have a dramatic series that continues to be interesting, you need some forward motion, even if it's a risk.

Magical Negro: Because even though we live in a world of countless cultures and creeds, they all exist to prop up the white, straight, able-bodied, male lead. Sadly, this is what defines Morgan Freeman's career, despite his prodigious talents.

Stuffed In The Fridge: Because women don't exist except to prop up men, and can be easily sacrificed to the altar of drama. Though to be fair, Ron Marz (who wrote the scene with Green Lantern's girlfriend stuffed in said fridge) is far from the only culprit, has written plenty of instances of strong female characters who aren't disposable, and should be able to live down what so many other authors do on a regular basis.

Hollywood Psych: A lot of these representation tropes are asinine to the NTH degree, but this especially pushes my buttons. Especially when a character on the autism spectrum is portrayed, because it almost always makes them a burden on their lived ones (an indirect Magical Negro variant) and/or a sociopath.

Rule of Funny: Too often used in lieu of good writing, as Family Guy continually proves.

Moral Guardians: Even though I have a lot of problems with representation, I think it would be better to try and inform people, rather than brainwash them by removing alternative thoughts.

Shallow Female Love Interest:Not just because it makes the female character a prize for the male, but because it makes the male seem like a shallow sex hound for being interested in just a pretty face.

I'm A Man I Can't Help It: And yeah, it's confirmed a LOT in real life, but it doesn't mean a dick is a dickhead license.

Top 10 Favorite Tropes: Blog-A-Day, Part 2

2011-02-25T13:38:00.000-08:00

In no particular order, the TVTropes that I love to read and write most;

Tear Jerker. I love a good tragedy, and this page helps me find plenty of reading material. Admittedly it's subjective, as some of the Tear Jerkers listed came across as gratuitous and over-the-top to me (see: Identity Crisis), but those of us who aren't afraid of a sad story can get a good idea of what they'll like.

Deconstruction: Tropes can be interpreted as rules, and when it comes to art, rules were meant to be broken. In a post-modern world, everything we know is driven by narrative, and if you're not actively taking it apart, you should ask yourself what you're doing.

Deconstructor Fleet: Most of my favorite stories of all time fall here.

Growing the Beard: The fact that series can do this is why I'm so drawn to serial fiction. While plenty of series run on longer than they should, and terrible sequels are practically the norm for many mediums, this is the strongest advantage of continuity.

Dysfunction Junction: Characters are more interesting when they're a complex mess, and the notion that ensemble casts need a token stable and happy character to balance out the more interesting characters is misguided. Everyone's some kind of mess, but that doesn't mean they can't be different kinds of screwed up.

Earn Your Happy Ending: To show that I'm not all about misery and ennui, I like it when all the character suffering and trauma actually results in something. If there's no ultimate gain to the protagonist's struggles, even if it doesn't occur within the protagonist's lifetime, then you run the risk of just being immature cynicism.

So Bad It's Horrible: You can learn just as much from complete failures as you can from a medium's canon, or even from its uneven but interesting entries. That, and they're fucking hilarious (albeit unintentionally).

Nakama: The one form of sentimentality that never fails for me is the kind that's earned through comraderie and shared experience. Religion, nationality, and ideology mean nothing without actual human relationships to back them up. Many of my favorite series run on this trope, and Ruby's World uses a similar structure.

ViewersAreGeniuses: Rare, and not always done well, but far better than the alternative.

Child Soldiers: In the real world, one of the worst examples of humanity's failings. In fiction, it appears a lot, and is often romanticized (see: most young adult fantasy stories). When played believably, mixing the horrors of war with the innocence of youth offers insight into the human condition, and how it can (and SHOULD) be bettered.

My TVTropes Responses; Blog-A-Day Week, Pt 1

2011-02-24T14:53:00.001-08:00

From my previous TVTropes survey;

1.) Yes, daily.

2.) Online, regularly. Offline, depending on my company, and their own familiarity with the site.

3.) Constantly. TVTropes has infected my brain patterns.

4.) Sometimes, like observing the behavior of one Christian Weston Chandler, who acts like he's "Adorkable" even though he's really "Psychopathic Manchild".

5.) Yes I do, though it's in order to deconstruct tropes I don't like. For example, Ruby is a largely intentional deconstruction of the Purity Sue; her beauty is skewed by her hulking stature, her kindness often leads to co-dependent relationships with others, her incorruptible morals are just as often the result of a childish and immature perspective as they are of her heroic nature, and she's prone to depression over her moral conflicts. I didn't know the trope at the time, but I was designing her to be a more believable version that sickeningly sweet persona seen in characters like Jean Grey(sans Phoenix), Gwen Stacy (original version), and Nunally from Code Geass.

6.) The endless wealth of information relevant to creative work. I often use it as supplemental research for both professional and creative writing, as it gives audience context to narratives in real life and fiction alike. For example, I've read through a lot of the weapon trope articles when designing action scenes, and have abolished several tropes like Dual Wielding thanks to the real-world descriptions.

7.) People who brutally misinterpret the tropes and attach them to their own agenda. For example, people who call Damian Wayne a Jerk Sue, having completely missed the fact that the Bat-Family barely puts up with him out of compassion, and the rest of Gotham just can't stand him.

8.) Metal Gear Solid, for which I am eternally grateful, and Sonichu, for which I am...somewhat less grateful.

9.) Hell yeah!

10.) and 11.) will receive seperate posts, tomorrow and the next day respectively.

TV Tropes Reader Questionaire

2011-02-13T16:03:00.001-08:00

Only recently have I realized the profound effect TVTropes has had upon me, both in the way I read stories, and the way I create them. For those who don't know, TVTropes is a website that chronicles storytelling devices, describing both the recurring themes and the works in which they appear. You can see an example of the tropes here, created with help from frequent commentator and friend Jared...

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RubysWorld

Anyway, I've been going to TVTropes for over three years now on a daily basis. When I'm looking for new stuff to read or watch, I look through their pages ( usually using Tear Jerker as a starting point). Whenever I finish a book, movie, game, or other series, I check out its entries on the page. I have even contributed to some of the pages. And I'm far from alone in my devotion to the site.

So here are my questions for those reading my blog...

1.) Do you visit TVTropes regularly?

2.) Do you use terms from TVTropes in discussions of fiction (both online and off)?

3.) Do you find yourself consciously recognizing examples of tropes when you read or watch fiction?

4.) Do you find yourself consciously recognizing examples of tropes in real life (personal interactions, professional life, news media, etc.)?

5.) If you are a writer, do you find yourself consciously thinking of tropes when you create and define your characters and their stories?

6.) What is your favorite thing about TVTropes?

7.) What is your least favorite thing about TVTropes?

8.) Have you come across any new stories thank to TVTropes?

9.) Do you think TVTropes is a good thing for fiction, or not?

10.) What are your personal favorite tropes?

11.) What are your personal least favorite tropes?

I'll have my own answers shortly.

Sonichu Sub-Episode 8: I Got Through This, But It Just Gets Worse From Here

2011-02-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

Thank God This Shit's Over, It Was Just Getting Tedious And Not Even Entertainingly Stupid

Bit by bit, Christian Weston Chandler is returning to the internet. He'd kept himself in exile for the past two months, going back to being a pathetic, isolated shut-in instead of a pathetic, publicized internet-famous shut-in. But LittleBigPlanet2 has debuted, and with it, another excuse for Chandler to spend taxpayer money on spamming user-generation games with his wretched creations. I'd been derelict in my responsibilities, but now I realize that I have to get through this series. Because even if Chandler actually succeeds in forgetting the Internet, the Internet must never forget Chandler.

Anyway, this Sub-Episode is the final Sub-Episode, because Chandler's mother insisted that he stop doing them. This was a move that was a good call in the short term, but completely useless in the bigger picture. Barbara Chandler, after all, has enabled Chris to become what he is, treating him like he's special (albeit in that patronizing way too often used on the developmentally disabled), not encouraging him to do something with his life, and bailing him out when he acts inappropriately. Even if she was worried that doing comics about his frustrations against real people would get back to him, it wouldn't ruin his life any worse than Barbara's already done.

Especially because Barbara herself appears in this comic-- albeit symbolically. Crystal Weston Chandler, the magical twin sister of Chris-Chan, serves as Barbara's surrogate. She is a familial figure to Chris-Chan, a woman he cannot fuck, but who insists that he is indeed attractive and is only single because others are conspiring against him. She helps him defeat his enemies, and even tells them why Chris' Love Quest is a noble pursuit (even his Attraction Sign methodology). Furthermore, she assures Chris that he is an attractive man, because she is related to him, and is presented attractively*.

Chandler probably didn't intend for his sister-character to resemble his mother-character, but then, he probably didn't intend for the fact that his 'children' Sonichu and Rosechu would be seen as having an incestuous relationship. But Chris had his entire childhood and adolescence to be shielded from consequences by his parents, and sadly, it's unlikely that he's ever going to admit he's done anything wrong now. And that goes for Chandler as an artist as well as Chandler as a human being.

Oh, and Spoiler Alert; Chandler may have stopped the sub-episodes, but he made the core Sonichu comic more about his personal problems than ever.

* Something that cannot be said for real-life Barbara, who is often compared to the Pokemon Snorlax.

Why Iron Man Represents Civilization's Worst

2011-01-27T15:32:00.000-08:00

(Reposted from the Iron Man Message Board, in response to the usual bitching about Matt Fraction's run)

Science isn't bad, but weapons are. And the problems with Tony's character are thus;

A.) He started out making weapons. He wasn't a civilian scientist who helped the war effort against a common enemy, he was an arms manufacturer from the start.

B.) He made billions off of the weapons he designed, and was very conspicuous about the way he used that money. Wearing suits that cost more money than an Afghani family makes in a year, paid for off of land mines that maim and kill those families, isn't in good taste.

C.) Tony's wars have never been the wars for which America is proud. In the past, in-comics jingoism aside, he was associated with Vietnam. In recent years, he's been associated with Afghanistan and the War on Terror. Regardless of your personal position on either of those wars, neither has been a particularly good mark on America's reputation.

D.) Up until that one fateful trip, Tony was never a soldier. He didn't see combat himself, and left his devices in the hands of the actual fighting men and women risking their lives. Even as Iron Man, he goes into combat insulated in a metal prosthesis that does all the fighting for him. At least in the past he entered combat with a heart injury and was truly putting himself at risk each time, but once his ticker was fixed, he was hardly facing opponents stronger than himself most of the time.

E.) Tony didn't even make his money himself. He made Stark Industries more successful than during his father's tenure, but he already had millions upon millions with which to start. The hardships he knew were from his father's disdain, but to most people, that just comes across as "poor little rich boy" syndrome.

F.) Even once he became Iron Man and stopped making weapons for others, he still made himself a symbol of imperialism. A billionaire playboy, putting on an ostentatious gold-and-red war suit, entering combat with a weapon that may avoid accidentally launching missiles at wedding parties, but has no problem shooting brown people with guns. That line is paraphrased from a particularly insightful (if harsh) assessment of the movies...

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/current-movie-reviews/iron-man-drivel.php?page=3

Basically, the problem isn't that Tony's a nerd and not a jock, or even that he's about science and not procreation. Even if he wasn't deliberately evil before he became Iron Man, even afterwards he represents a global system of profound inequality and constant struggle. The ending to issue 500 was the worst-case scenario of Tony's fears-- that he'd never do enough good to make up for his sins. The ending, however, had his daughter live in a society starting from zero, so at least Tony's sacrifice earned humanity a second chance, with a new generation that can at least make their own mistakes instead of having to struggle with their parents and grandparents' sins.

With Iron Man, you can either try to ignore these concerns and play the character as a straight superhero genre story, or you can deal with them. If you choose the latter, as Matt Fraction has done, you're dealing with an extremely tragic narrative.

An Open Letter To Mark Millar Re: Superior

2011-01-20T16:57:00.000-08:00

Dear Mark Millar,

In the unlikely event that you have been reading this blog, you probably know my increasing dissatisfaction with your output in the past few years. This comes from a place where I once loved your work, back on the Authority and the Ultimate titles. There were innovative titles that were very entertaining and felt like genuinely modern takes on the superhero genre. Even in more recent years you've delivered some very good comics like Wolverine: Enemy of the State and the Marvel Knights Spider-Man. The frustration I feel with more recent works (particularly your ICON output and your Ultimate Avengers revamp) comes from the feeling that you are working well below your potential. Some part of me still held out hope that you'd do thoughtful works again, but after I read Superior #4, I realized that wouldn't be the case.

My experience with Superior was at first conflicted; on the one hand, I thought that the not-Superman Superman analogue was the worst cliche of creator-owned superhero writers, filing serial numbers off and calling it 'meta' rather than creating unique characters. One the other hand, I was impressed with how Simon's Multiple Sclerosis was handled. You made the character's suffering realistic and sympathetic, and you treated him as a major character rather than a pet to showcase others' greatness. And even while I'd lost interest in your other books, I still wanted to see this story progress, and see how Simon would live his life with super-powers.

But that's not what this story is about, is it? The backstory of Simon is scarcely mentioned in issues 3 and 4, and instead the story starts focusing on the Superman analogue. All the old tropes are trotted out, with Simon doing all the heroic Superman things with his Superior powers, and the world acting like he's a savior. The narrator even goes out to talk about Superman-- I mean Superior's origins, and how he inspired kids people during the 30's. This is a unique insight that everyone who's even heard of The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay already knows.

Admittedly, it's optimistic, which is a far cry from your previous Icon stories (which are about, respectively, a wannabe teen hero who pretends to be gay to get chicks, and an evil Batman analogue who impregnates his enemy's daughter with the sperm of his son and booby-traps her womb. But just because it's unique for you, doesn't mean it's unique for others. I've already seen stories that try to reintroduce wonder and hope to superhero comics. I've read Marvels, the "Heroes Return" Marvel books, Grant Morrison's JLA and All-Star Superman, Mark Waid's Fantastic Four, and other comics that believed that being traditional was revolutionary. Most of them weren't so self-conscious about it, though-- they also had inherently interesting stories to go with the nostalgia.

This would merely make it forgettable had I not read your afterword for the first issue, where you talk about the importance of creating new heroic characters for each generation, like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko did in the 60's. But a technicality doesn't make something new. Superior is Prime from Malibu's Ultraverse, who was Captain Marvel from Fawcett. If it was a story about a kid dying of multiple sclerosis, as in the actually GOOD opening parts of the comic, I would have loved it. But you couldn't divorce yourself from the superhero genre, and had to make MS the Culturally Noteworthy Tragic Backstory to inspire Simon when he becomes Superior. Which, in its own way, is again reducing the disabled character to a prop off which others look better.

The cliffhanger with the seemingly compassionate but actually evil Space Monkey giving Simon's bully powers did nothing to convince me that this story will be going anywhere. I'm just not going to bother, because if you've stopped caring about trying anything different, why should I care about what you do?

Hoping you'll write something interesting again,
-Neil Kapit

Sonichu Sub-Episode 7 Critical Review: Remember When This Comic Was About Sonichu?

2011-01-14T14:33:00.001-08:00

We're Still Fighting Mall Security?

There's not much more that can be said about the plot here, as it's still Chris-Chan fighting super-powered mall security. He finally meets their leader, Jerkhief Daitenzen Bagget*. The character is based on real-life Albemarle County police officer Marcus Baggett, who actually sounds like an upstanding gentleman. His noble deeds include risking his life to get two people out of a burning building, shooting down a man who stole a police car and shot at the cops, and, of course, telling a creepy man-child not to solicit for sex in the Target food court. The latter, obviously, contradicts Chandler's perspective.

From most people's perspectives, Bagget is a brave and decent member of local law enforcement. If there is any evidence to the contrary, it is not the fact that he had the gall to get remove Chandler and his Attraction Sign from a public location. Of course, in the world of CWCVille, it's not enough that Bagget and Chandler disagree. Bagget has to be a super-villain who rides a Cybertronian war machine.** Which actually works in canon-Bagget's favor, because he's standing up to the clown-striped Caligula. The "Private Villa of Corrupted Citizens" is the underground resistance in Sonichu fanworks for a reason, after all.

This comic also has one of the most significant panels in the history; the Drinking Straw of Fail. Christian Weston Chandler's trademark failure at proportion strikes hardest here, as the straw in his avatar's mouth looks especially long, wide, and thick. Chandler is also well-documented as a homophobe. Connect the dots as you see fit...

On the plus side, Jared's comments in the previous Sonichu review were inspiring and well-written. The man he spoke of is the Peter Parker to Chandler's Doctor Octopus.

* Apparently a reference to/plagiarism of Excel Saga, an anime the Chandler loves. I should probably start watching it, because I hear it's actually good, just that the parody elements go right over Chandler's head.
** "Crackder", inspired by the Transformers: Cybertron/Galaxy Force version of Thundercracker. That was a really shitty design, with one of the robot's hands being a huge slab of the jet's back. Certainly Chandler's spent enough of his parents/the state of Virginia's money on Transformers that he could at least plagiarize a toy that didn't look like ass?

Sonichu Sub-Episode 6 Critical Review: A Documentary On Human Despair

2011-01-08T19:54:00.000-08:00

If you tried to forget the horror, I won't let you

Christian Weston Chandler has disappeared from the internet in recent weeks-- at least, he's disappeared from the parts of the internet that he doesn't like. He's still spending the majority of his life on the PlayStation Network, playing games bought with taxpayer money and racking up trophies for his "achievements". I'd lost my enthusiasm for writing these reviews at first, because the momentum of his saga was lost. However, though Chandler may have left being an amusing failure on the internet behind so he can return to being a tragic failure in real life, his body of work remains.

We must never forget.

Sonichu Sub-Episode 6 is a bizarre attempt at world-building, as Chris-Chan gives us a documentary on the 'evil' Jerkops. In this so-called Backyard Safari, Chris-Chan is the authoritative voice narrating the truth about his mall security nemeses. Presumably, this is a propaganda film distributed through CWCVille to mold public opinion. Since CWCville already has a Mayor-For-Life who maintains order through his private military of electric hedgehogs, the idea that it's a totalitarian state is hardly a stretch.

There is disturbing similarity between this documentary and the racist propaganda used by various governments, as Chris-Chan takes great pains to convince us that the Jerkops are sub-human. According to Chris-Chan, the Jerkops only think evil and naughty thoughts, are covered with disgusting veins and hair under their clothes, and instinctually loathe virgins. The Jerkhief is most distrubing of all, weighing 1'500 pounds of bone and blubber. What makes this especially disturbing is Chris-Chan's assertion that Jerkops are recruited via brain-washing the mentally handicapped, so he's effectively slaughtering helpless human beings without a care in the world. Of course, Chandler has already dehumanized his enemies, as bigots tend to do. It's easier if you assume your target doesn't feel pain.

This chapter demonstrates both why Christian Weston Chandler the phenomenon is so fascinating, and why Christian Weston Chandler the individual isn't deserving of sympathy. Chandler pursues his targets with disgusting vitriol, but his hang-ups are so bizarre and petty that he's as hilarious as he is disturbing. I mean, his fictional city uses propaganda to fan the flames of hatred against mall security officers who try to stop him from hitting on any boyfriend-free girl that moves. Who else would think up such a thing without a note of irony? For that matter, who could come up with such a concept even with irony?

The Allie Awards: Best Comics Of 2010

2010-12-30T18:59:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't feel right doing a list of negatives without a list of positives, so even though my interest in following monthly comics has diminished, I still read plenty of good stuff this year. Named for the world's greatest cat, here are the awards for the best of the best, the comics that had me genuinely excited.

BEST NEW SUPERHERO SERIES: Avengers Academy by Christos Gage and Mike McKone. Yeah, it sounded like just another teen team book...until the end of the first issue, when it was revealed that all the teens are at-risk superhumans with troubled pasts, and the adults are only training them to keep them from becoming villains. Then it was clear that Avengers Academy would be an excellent new book with a complex cast of characters. The fact that they're younger doesn't mean they're treated condescendingly by the creative team-- in fact, these kids are just as competent as the adults (though when the adults are all failed Avengers, it might not be saying too much).

BEST ONGOING SUPERHERO SERIES: Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca. Last year's World's Most Wanted story was, and still is, my all-time favorite Iron Man saga. This year didn't quite measure up to that, as a lot of it was set-up needed to rebuild everything Tony had lost. But even when the story was going too slow, I didn't find it less interesting. Last year had Tony going on what appeared to be his final mission, sacrificing his entire legacy down to the last brain cell so it would stay out of Norman's hands. This year had Tony wake up with an incomplete memory, learning about the horrible mistakes he'd made without having any attachment to having made them, and trying to redefine who he is. Making a new company out of a small group of trusted partners, ditching the military entirely to just focus on his clean energy, and using Pepper's Rescue identity as a symbol for the ideal future of Iron Man were moves that indicated that Tony was A.) determined to make the world a better place, and B.) desperate to move forward to the point of not thinking the implications of his moves through.

In the process, we got a lot of great stuff, including the Iron Man Requiem back-up strip (that, in a move of metatextual tragicomedy, has the brain-damaged Tony hallucinate that his origin was AGAIN in Vietnam), a rather creepy look into Tony's sub-conscious, a brilliant reinventing of the Mandarin as egotistical despot a la Kim Jong Il or Christian Weston Chandler, an excellent-looking new armor, and the villains forming into a family act. Like the Aristocrats, except...well, given how it's the granddaughter of Justin Hammer/daughter of the Mandarin and the son of Obadiah Stane, it's pretty much the Aristocrats.

MOST SATISFYING SUPERHERO MOMENT: Siege #3 by Brian Michael Bendis and Olivier Coipel. After letting the world fall apart in the midst of their petty in-fighting, the Avengers get their shit together and take back their country. Captain America leads the charge against Norman Osborn, Iron Man shuts down the Iron Patriot tech with a condescending push of a button, and Spider-Man punches the bastard in the face. It wasn't brilliant, but damn did it feel good to see.

BEST SERIES CONCLUSION: Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6 by Bryan Lee O'Malley. This series has become popular not just for its video game references mixed with twentysomething angst, but the fact that it's actually quite well-done. After having broken up with Ramona in the previous volume, Scott regresses to his irresponsible man-child ways, only to find that it's no longer even remotely endearing. Embarassed, he has to pull himself together and fight Ramona's final evil Ex, Gideon Graves. But it's not Scott who gets the spotlight, but Ramona, who finally realizes that she can move past her baggage, and joins in the magically realistic fight. The ending doesn't go directly for happily ever after, but for the idea that Scott and Ramona now have the chance to movee on, and it doesn't treat Ramona as a prize to be won or lost, but a capable agent in the story.

Oh, and Gideon is finished off with a move from Chrono Trigger. Can't forget that.

BEST WEBCOMIC: The City of Reality by Ian Samson This series about a cartoony, hyper-idealistic city representing an isolationist paradise in a really horrible cosmos is one of my favorite webcomics ever. Unfortunately it went on hiatus this year, but it had some utterly great stories, most particularly the utter collapse of Reality's attempt to open its borders. This series made optimism cool, and hopefully Ian Samson will get back to it sooner rather than later. But don't take my word for it.... you can see the whole site Here.

BEST TEAR JERKER: The Boys #47, by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. The gratuitous violence and debauchery in this series obscures the brilliant storytelling and character depth. For years we've seen Wee Hughie, the only member of the Boys who is actually a nice person, dating Annie January, who (unbeknownst to him) is a member of the decadent military-industrial super-team known as the Seven. When he finds out not only this fact, but sees footage of her giving a group blow-job to get on the team. Given how a member of the Seven carelessly got his last girlfriend killed, Hughie is furious with Annie and throws ever horrible insult he can make at her. Annie, who has been feeling horrible and traumatized about what she had done, doesn't defend herself and begs for forgiveness. Hughie knows she's right, but leaves her anyway. It was an extremely tragic moment for the characters whose relationship was the heart of the series, and it was done perfectly.

The Limp Arrow Awards For Worst Comics Of 2010

2010-12-24T20:08:00.000-08:00

Originally I had entitled these end-of-year rant posts the "Humperdoozie ", after the inbred descendant of Christ from Preacher. However, I realized that might come across as though I equate crappy comics with developmental disabilities, and I don't want that. So I've changed the award name to something more specific and less offensive-- except to people who can't get it up because of nanite arm stump infection. Fortunately, none of them are coming forward any time soon.

Here's the best way I can express my opinion about the year's comics-- 2010 was the year when I stopped identifying myself as a superhero comic fan. I'd enjoyed a lot of the stuff from 2009, and I still enjoyed some things in 2010. But this was the year where I finally emancipated myself from specific allegiances, because I'd found other interests that filled the void. I've found franchise superhero comics largely an Ouroburos that somehow kept finding more of its tail upon which to nosh, and I don't know if it was just getting fed up with the directions of comics, or focusing my attention on other mediums that told the kinds of stories I actually wanted to see.

But let's put it this way...you know how Mark Millar wrote his own afterword for Superior #1, saying about how comics fans needed new superhero characters to replace the tired constructs of the Golden and Silver Ages? Well, I found my new hero. His name is Solid Snake. :P

Anyway, onwards with the awards...

Worst Story Resolution: X-Men: Second Coming. After dragging the DeciMation out for five years, Marvel resolves it via living deus ex machina Hope Summers, whose Phoenix powers revive the mutant race with....five new mutants. That's equal to the amount of mutants killed in the crossover, significantly less than the amount of mutants killed since the DeciMation, and not even remotely worth the moral compromises Cyclops made in the name of chasing a messiah child without any evidence to support his faith. Yet now Cyclops is the hero, and everyone loves him, even though he's treated every mutant he wasn't sleeping with (re: every mutant except Emma and maybe Wolverine ) as expendable. Seeing Scott awarded the Medal of Honor by Captain America was especially jarring, since Cap wouldn't have stood for the shit Scott did, even in a wartime situation.

Worst New Direction: JMS' Superman. Walking through small towns trying to find the real America was corny when Green Lantern and Green Arrow did it in the 70's. But at least they were open to learning from their experience. Superman's just ditching his responsibilities to the entire world so he can slum it with mere mortals and feel better about himself. At best he's a politician going on a campaign trail to win his constituents' favor, and at worst he's an anthropologist fascinated by the behavior of us chimpanzees. Neither seems like a good use of his talents, and it's an especially jarring waste of a year's worth of comics.

Worst Move For Diversity Of Representation: DC Comics killing off the Ryan Choi Atom. Was Ray Palmer such an original and compelling personality that he had to return to the role at the cost of the new guy's life? What made him so much more " iconic " in that minor role, that he would have his competition eliminated by divine intervention...oh, wait, he's a white Silver Age character. And Ryan's a Chinese-American from the current generation. That explains it, and it's hardly the only example of the classic white guys taking back roles from their more diverse counterparts. At least in this case, people who enjoyed the All-New Atom comic/don't enjoy DC's current direction got a karmic bone by seeing the villain who killed Ryan sentenced to death by Snoo-Snoo.

Worst Comic About A Junkie Ex-Sideckick Who Cradles A Dead Cat During A Heroin Hallucination After Being Unable To Get It Up With The Supervillain Babymama Of His Dead Daughter Due To A Nanobot Infection In His Arm Stump: Rise of Arsenal. Okay, it didn't have too much competiton, but still, you can't make that shit up. At least, you couldn't until a professional writer DID.

Worst Trend: Identity Sub-Franchising. The Incredible Hulk has become The Incredible Hulks, with every character of his supporting cast now being a similar gamma-powered monster. Batman has become Batman Inc., franchising his identity built through a lifetime of suffering out to anyone who passes the job interview. Wolverine's gone from a solo X-Men spin-off to his own franchise, with a team book of is own and books for his clone daughter and evil son. There are two Captain Americas, a family of Flashes, and a Lantern Corps of every color. Has everyonejust given up on the idea that being a superhero can be inherently special? Or is it just

Limp Arrow 2010 Lifetime Unachievement Award: Mark Millar. See the above comment, except that his " new " concepts are a book about comic book fanboys playing at being heroes, a book about a Batman rip-off acting like a Joker rip-off, and a book about a Shazam rip-off. If you don't want to do the same old thing as everyone else, don't do the same old thing as everyone else! Filing off the serial numbers and adding a lot of swearing and "timely" pop culture references isn't good enough.

Ruby Nation Is Coming: Get Your Passports Ready

2010-12-20T12:12:00.000-08:00

As Baby New Year 2010 has become Dying Old Man 2010 thanks to the terminator genes engineered into him by the Patriots, we start making resolutions for 2011's arrival. 2010 was a big year for me, as I started doing freelance writing, got a lot of Ruby's World comics done, found a wonderful new fandom in Metal Gear Solid, and a horrifying new interest in Sonichu. But I digress...

People who have been keeping up with the Ruby's World comic know that it's coming to a close, and is going into the next chapter, entitled Ruby Nation. After being transformed, ostracized, and appalled by the world, our nine-foot-tall heroine is going to start her own country with a new, uncorrupted system. Joined by the comrades she's made along the way, and funded by the US government's black budget ( in exchange for military services against Beagle Labs ), Ruby plans to take an island military base off the coast of Southern California and make it into a refuge for other nanotech-enhanced young people, allowing them a place where they can live in peace and feel accepted.

It will NOT be an easy task.

This story is the story I actually want to tell. Consider Ruby's World a warm-up, what was necessary for me to gain the storytelling abilities and set up the framework for Ruby Nation. I've always been bothered by the reactive nature of hero stories, how most characters simply respond to threats instead of trying to build something positive. And most of the hero stories that do have the heroes try to reform society end up going into aggravating slippery slope parables, where taking the risks to do something positive makes the heroes into extremists or outright villains. This is going to be a more complex examination of what it requires to build something pure in a fallen world than, say, Iron Man being treated as a despot for trying to change the system from within.

The launch of Ruby Nation will not be for another few months, because I wanted to wrap up this saga in a properly heartbreaking fashion. And I will not be updating this weekend or next, due to the holiday vacation. However, when the story returns to regular scheduling, you'll see what the point of divergence between World and Nation is-- and who'll actually get through it alive.

Check Out My New Job At Console Press

2010-12-13T14:19:00.000-08:00

If I've seemed lax with blogs/responses/horrifying you all with Sonichu reviews, it's partly because I've been busy getting the hang of a new job; Video Game News Editor at ConsolePress! I help find and write-up news across the video game industry.

You can check out the site and its daily updates ( some of which are mine ) Here.

Signs Your Life Has Been Revamped By Geoff Johns

2010-12-07T17:36:00.000-08:00

-- You find yourself in the same job and wardrobe that you had in your twenties. If you are in your twenties now, you find yourself in the same classes and wardrobe that you had in high school. All of the progress you have made since has been nullified via convoluted circumstances that reset your status quo.

-- Similarly, elements of your outdated wardrobe are now given intense personal significance. If you wore leg-warmers, you've started wearing them again because they were given to you by a friend who was hit by a bus. If you sported a mullet, you have once again chosen that hairstyle because it reminds you of the uncle who touched you, and gives you the feeling that you've conquered your past.

-- All of your friends and family throughout your entire life history are hanging around. You find that your life is basically just one big family reunion, with kindergarten playmates, high school sweethearts, bitter workplace rivals, and dead grandparents popping up. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention...

-- All of the people who've passed on in your life have come back. They may be traumatized after having been dead, but they're back to life and healthy. Any sense of loss is gone, replaced with confusion and a vague irritation at being manipulated by the powers that be.

-- In addition to everyone who'd been in your life having returned, you also find that a bunch of new people with close ties to your old associates have appeared. If you are in a poker league called " the Kitchen Table Crew ", they now face competition from the mysterious " Breakfast Nook Crew ", the bizarre and unpredictable " Linen Closet Crew ", and the sinister " Waterbed in the Basement Crew ".

-- Your rivals have become much nastier. The schoolyard bully who gave everyone wedgies now rips peoples' spines out through their buttocks. The guy who makes offensive racist jokes at work now keeps the bodies of his minority victims in his basement, and uses their coffers to put on puppet shows. And the obnoxious teenaged clerk at the convenience store has laced all the hot dogs with neurotoxins that cause four hours of mind-blowing pain before death.

-- Last but not least, you are having vision troubles because narrative caption boxes expressing your personal problems obscure everything you see.

Sonichu Sub-Episode 5 Critical Review: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Drool Over My Sister

2010-12-01T06:24:00.000-08:00

Didn't I Tell You It Gets Worse

Previously in Sonichu, Chris-Chan had defeated the B-Manajerk and Merried Seinor Comic who threatened to stop him from soliciting for sex at the " Mal-Wart " food court. However, he was confronted by the WM-Manajerk, a human head attached to a giant robot body*. Now, Chris-Chan is getting the crap beaten out of him by this new Manajerk. Fortunately, his gold-armored " Cherokian " ancestor appears in a vision, and tells Chris-Chan what he needs to do in order to summon his dream sibling....Crystal Weston Chandler.

Crystal is basically the female twin of Chris-Chan ( not Christian Weston Chandler, mind you, but his idealized avatar ). She wears a hedgehog medallion and a gaudy striped shirt, transforms into a Rosechu, and wields the same " Curse-Ye-Ha-Me-Ha " black magic as her brother. Her personality is entirely supplimentary to Chris'; she assists him in defeating the WM-Manajerk, and lectures the defeated severed head on why her brother's Love Quest is noble, but doesn't show any outside independent thought. Chandler created Crystal as the exact kind of woman he wants, a servile distaff counterpart to himself. Yet he chose to make this woman a blood relative, the kind that he couldn't ethically touch ( even by his own flimsy moral code ).

So why would a man capable of creating the woman he wants to be his dream mate instead create a sister he can't touch? Well, Chandler wants someone who understands and approves of him and his plans. By creating a clone of himself, he's made sure that his ideal friend understands what it means to be him. And by making the clone female, her approval of his Love Quest is meant to carry more weight. Back in high school, Chandler had several " gal-pals "**, females who were friendly to him but not romantically linked. Perhaps making Crystal a sister is Chandler's way of ensuring that she stay as his friend, because even his libido wouldn't make him commit the incest taboo.

It may also be the case that Chandler doesn't want to get a girlfriend without having " earned " her through a Love Quest, which is why he can't get a girl even in his own fictional universe. This is possibly the only concession that can be offered to Chandler, that he isn't so absorbed in his fantasy world that he can invent himself a sweetheart. Then again, Chandler isn't above having his avatar get laid; in later chapters, he travels to the future and fucks his future self's wife, taking advantage of the mistaken identity.***

And the sad part is that at this point, Chandler at least approaches his Love Quest with honest ( if deluded ) conviction. But we're still seeing things like his ad for Axe Deodorant, where Rosechu tells Sonichu that she wants to " orbit your belt " because he uses the Orion scent. The pretense that there's anything noble about Sonichu gets flimsier and flimsier.

* Which appears copied from the Transformer Jazz. It's likely that Chandler owns that specific toy of the character, given everything else upon which he's blown Virginian taxpayer money. And yet he doesn't draw the body with any attempt at proportion or perspective, thus negating even the POINT of plagiarizing.
** Having mainly platonic female friends is commonly associated with gay men-- ironic considering Chandler's vicious homophobia.
*** I'm worried about how well my sanity will hold out until that review. :P

Disability Blog Carnival, Now With 100% More Neil

2010-11-28T17:13:00.000-08:00

You may have already read my postscript for the recent Ruby's World strips, but they're also up on the Disability Blog Carnival. There are plenty of great articles here, my personal favorites being " How Disability Affects Wellbeing " and " The Big Society and Charity Model of Disability "

These blogs should be required reading for any participant in a human society. You can read them Here.

Sonichu Sub-Episode 4 Critical Review: Childish Idolatry Just The Way You Like It

2010-11-23T19:31:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving, Hope You Like Crap

Christian Weston Chandler's famed inability-- nay, unwillingness*-- to grow up is best symbolized by his avatar's power sources. In the augmented reality of CWCVille, Chandler's toys, games, and dress-up accessories aren't just creature comforts**-- they actually give him the strength to defeat his enemies. This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase " Security Blanket ", because the security provided to Chandler by his in-universe playthings is the equivalent of the most dangerous private military contractor.

Sub-Episode 4 has Chris-Chan demonstrate the power of his Peter Pan mentality upon more villains ( i.e. people who don't want to see a creepy little man soliciting his body in a public place ). We open to see Chris-Chan sitting in the Mal-Wart region's food court ( a.k.a. the real world Wal Mart, because that's where all the eligible young singles congregate ), musing upon how the world is against his Love Quest. He is confronted by the B-Manajerk and his partner " Merried Senior Comic "***, who tell him that love is forbidden in the Mal-Wart region. They call him a solicitor, an accurate assessment that sends Chris-Chan into a self-righteous fury. Fortunately, Chris-Chan is joined by his latest electric hedgehog creation, Darkbind Sonichu ( a mixture of Sonic, Pikachu, Darkwing Duck, and Link from Legend of Zelda**** ).

In the fight, Chandler uses all of his childish playthings with deadly results. Not only does his Sonichu medallion allow him to once again become Chris-Chan Sonichu, but it turns the anime wing hairclips on his head from a girl's cosplay accessory to actual flight-capable wings sprouting from his skull. In the battle, Chris-Chan also accesses his Pixelblocks to create a duplicate of himself that throws off the B-Manajerk-- because the 8-bit video game construction toy is now apparently capable of creating a lifelike copy of an organic lifeform.

It's a common theme in hero stories to demonstrate that super-powers can't solve personal problems-- that being Spider-Man won't help Peter Parker keep a job or a girlfriend, that Iron Man tech won't solve Tony Stark's fear of intimacy, that Green Lantern's ring can't stop bigoted thugs from beating up his gay assistant, and so on. This is not much different in Sonichu, except for the fact that this is how Christian Weston Chandler honestly sees his life. He believes that Sonichu is advantageous for him as a potential mate. The security he feels with the trappings of his TV-Y7 fandoms is where he feels empowered, and he doesn't listen to anyone who would tell him otherwise.

But if CWCVille makes Chandler's comfort zone into a super-power, then it also makes the people who tell him what he doesn't want to hear into one-dimensional villains. It's not enough that Wal-Mart not be a place where soliciting for a mate is acceptable, it has to be a fascist regime with anti-love laws written into its constitution. And it's not enough that Chris-Chan simply wants a mate but can't find one due to him being Chris-Chan, he has to be a tragic hero fighting on against the " infinitely-high boyfriend factor ".

* The disturbingly extensive documentation we have about Chandler's life is plenty of reason not to show him sympathy; the people who try to defend him need only read the CWCiki to learn that nobody trolls Chris worse than Chris.
** I'm not really one to criticize adult men for having toys, given my three-figure collection of Transformers. But like with his other quirks, Chandler's problem isn't that he has interests below his appropriate age range-- it's that he doesn't want to bother with anything else, and doesn't feel like he should have to.
*** Nobody has figured out what that string of misspelled words means. Probably not even Chandler himself.
**** The latter because he wields a sword and is on a quest to rescue his princess, Zelina Rosechu. Ironically, the Legend of Zelda games never suggest that Link's desire to save Zelda is anything more than his platonic heroism.

Captain America " Fighting Chance ": A Really Uncomfortable Masterpiece

2010-11-19T13:12:00.000-08:00

I recently read the two trades collecting " Fighting Chance ", the Captain America mega-arc by the late writer/editor Mark Gruenwald. My thoughts on the story are extremely conflicted, because while it's a surprisingly deep and poignant examination of the character and his legacy, it also has an unfortunate implication that doesn't seem fully addressed by the text.

The story begins with Steve Rogers talking to a doctor, who'd examined him regarding cramps and fatigue. The news he receives is much more dire than he expected; the Super-Soldier Serum that made him into Captain America is breaking down, and his body can't handle the level of activity that being a superhero entails. He receives this ultimatum; retire from crimefighting and live a full civilian life, or stay as Cap and risk total muscular paralysis within a year. Guess which one he chooses? Spoiler alert; it's not the one that would suggest he could have a meaningful life without punching Nazis in the jaw.

I became interested in this story because of its similarities to Metal Gear Solid 4, which has super-soldier Solid Snake aging rapidly and having trouble being an action hero. While Cap doesn't wrinkle up or start growing a dapper grey mustache, his experience is similar, failed by the physical strength that defined him and going into action despite increased risk. Both characters also start to require assistive technology to keep fighting, Snake wearing his Octocamo muscle suit while Cap starts wearing a belt-and-pocket-laden gadget suit, and later dons a Starktech exoskeleton once he completely paralyzes himself. There's even a thematic link between the two stories when both characters start thinking about their legacies, and what they'll leave behind for the next generation. For Snake it's being treated as a burden by former comrades, while for Cap it's meeting a new generation of vigilantes with different-- and often perverted-- interpretations of the American dream.

However, the place where they diverge is the place where Fighting Chance makes me uncomfortable. For Snake, death is the inevitable outcome of his aging, and he's desperate to finish his mission in the little time he has left. But for Cap, THE TERMINAL PROGNOSIS IS HIS OWN DAMN FAULT. The doctor tells Cap that he can live out a normal life if he retires from the battlefield. Cap doesn't like this news, but he does very little to try and take it easy-- instead, he keeps putting himself into combat situations. In doing so, he aggravates his cellular degeneration and eats away what strength he has left. Other than then-girlfriend Diamondback, he keeps his illness secret from his comrades, even his super-genius friends like Hank Pym and Tony Stark*. There are plenty of instances where the muscle spasms render Cap less effective or even outright useless, but he keeps fighting.

This is even more troublesome when you consider the fact that not only is Captain America capable of living a normal lifespan, but that his intervention isn't absolutely necessary for the world's security. Snake has the " advantage " of being the designated hero of his world, capable of feats no other soldier could match. In the world of Metal Gear Solid, being able to take down a ten-story robot with nothing but a rocket launcher is a skill that's very rare, especially amongst people who don't want to destroy civilization. But there are plenty of other superheroes in the Marvel Universe, and while they might not have Cap's legendary skills or reputation, they could certainly do the job. Even before the Marvel Universe became professionalized with an omnipresent SHIELD and a 50-State Initiative, there were Avengers teams on both coasts, the Fantastic Four and their network of fantasy nation friends ( T'Challa, the Inhumans, Namor on a good day, etc. ), dozens of urban vigilantes in the Big Apple, and way more mutants than anybody cares to remember. To Cap's credit he does start training Free Spirit ( the one new flag-suited vigilante in the story who isn't off their rocker ), but his pride keeps him from asking for help from people who can do the job without risking paralysis.

Of course, Cap eventually gets better**, but he didn't know that he'd make a full recovery... what Cap knew was that he could have lived out the rest of his life as a civilian, but instead chose to kill himself with a blaze of glory. This was explicit with Snake, who's always been presented as a death drive hero. But Cap is the great boy scout, the guy who sets the moral standard for the rest of the hero community. When he's killing himself to pretend that he can still be a superhero in spite of his disability, he's saying that he has no worth outside of his physical abilities. He doesn't even try to consider what he could do besides being Captain America.

Unfortunately it's an occupational hazard of the narrative for heroes to completely disregard any handicaps that would interfere with them doing their job. Metal Gear Solid 4 at least pulled no punches in showing how Snake's final mission was motivated by a mixture of necessity and self-loathing. But then again, Metal Gear Solid 4 was the last Sold Snake game, and subsequent games have starred other characters. Steve Rogers came back, so not only was he willing to disregard his health out of idiotic pride, but he didn't suffer any permanent consequences for it.

I mean, one of Cap's contemporaries was FDR, and he led us against the Nazis from a wheelchair...

* In an issue by Len Kaminski, Steve Rogers confides in Tony the degeneration of his Super-Soldier powers, but conveniently omits the fact that being Cap is killing him.
** And I admit I haven't read the stories in which he recovers, but since these stories were published in the 90's, I was fairly certain that he wouldn't stay down.

Ruby's World: Ruby and Jens Postscript: The Redemption of the Neurotypical

2010-11-15T14:39:00.000-08:00

I've finished the latest round of text pieces for Ruby's World, but the ending came sooner than I'd originally planned. Normally I don't like to talk about my work, for fear of A.) hindering the audience's ability to make their own conclusions, and B.) coming across as a pretentious douche. However, this is a case where the audience is unfortunately not likely to come to these conclusions.

If it seems deliberate that the two boys in Ruby's life-- Jens Larson and Jiro Sasaki-- both have first names that are four letters and start with J, that's because it is deliberate. The early drafts of this story were called " Ruby and Jens ", and only had those two characters plus Ruby's father. The rest was more standard high school superhero stuff, with Ruby's giant form triggered by stress ( sort of like a pre-college " Savage She-Hulk " ). These stories, which I did in undergraduate largely as prose pieces, were extremely crude by comparison to what I'm doing now. Like any self-respecting artist, I look back upon my previous work and see only mistakes, and the only satisfaction I get is to realize that I'm not doing that shit anymore. The thing that bothered me most in hindsight was the fact that I wrote Jens as too idealized a normal guy-- he was still without powers and had a sarcastic voice, but he was unremittingly loyal and selfless, and more effective in combat situations. Which in hindsight, is pretty ridiculous even by science fiction standards; if you want to compete in a world of super-powers, you have to work harder than ever, and the sacrifices that must be made to become that competent leave scars that take you outside the world of normality. Just ask Batman.

When I revised the story in 2008 and expanded upon it dramatically as " Ruby's World ", I kept Jens around, but instead of using him as more of a male power fantasy ( albeit one who exists in a world where the protagonist is a female hero, and is measured by his ability to be badass by normal human standards ), I used him as an obnoxious counterpoint to Ruby and the new characters. Jiro was created as an explicit contrast to Jens, someone who had the hyper-competences, but came from a place of feeling like an outsider. While Jens' issues were mostly ones of teen angst, Jiro had hard challenges in his life-- autism, poverty from the hardships his Japanese-American family still faced, incredible PTSD from the experiments that made him a cybernetic super-soldier, and clear markings of difference even with his powers ( red eyes and metal joints ). And Ruby became closer to Jiro because he actually understood what it was like to be different, instead of slumming with the outcasts despite having the ability to pass for normal.

When I started writing the text pieces from Jens' perspective, I started with a clear direction in mind; I was going to make him a villain. I would have his feelings of inadequacy due to his lack of powers get to the point where he'd abandon Ruby and her group, and make a deal with Beagle Labs to get powers of his own. Of course, he wasn't going to become evil, because he was doing it to secretly help Ruby. Similar to Revolver Ocelot from the Metal Gear Solid games, he'd ultimately be on the same side as the heroes, but he'd make himself the bad guy and make morally unconscionable decisions in the process. And he'd do so knowing that it would eventually get him killed, but that sacrifice would be redemptive.

However, as I started to get feedback on these stories, particularly from a friend who eloquently expressed how he could relate to Jens, I changed course. Even though Jens could pass for normal, it was observed that he didn't feel normal-- even before the world became overtly transformed by nanotech, he felt weak and inadequate. People think it's easy for young men in American culture, at least compared to young women-- however, many of the privileges that come with being in the majority are only available if you meet the majority's criteria. If you want to be treated as a strong man ( especially in high school ), you have to act manly, to not show feelings and through your weight around, and to not have interests that could put you in the out-group. Jens was shy and awkward, and didn't fit those criteria. Even though he was male, white, straight, and neurotypical, he still didn't fit socially. Which is why he's drawn to Ruby and her group-- he knows what it feels like to be an outcast. Realizing that, I thought it would be better to keep him alive. A heroic sacrifice after feigning treachery would suggest that the character's worth was contingent on an impressive suicide, and would be a betrayal of the audience members who found something worthwhile in Jens.

So I shifted direction with the story, and changed the text pieces to reach a quicker but more subdued and humane ending. I wanted instead for Jens to reach some kind of peace with himself-- not for him to stop feeling inadequate, but to give him just enough of a morale boost to keep going. The scene with him and Alexis talking was a metatextual expression of this; both characters feel peripheral, as Alexis has the same feelings of inadequacy, and while she does have powers, they're non-combative and ill-defined ( in contrast with the rest of the series, where advanced technology explains everything ). Their ability to go on becomes contingent on their ability to find worth in themselves, instead of their roles in cultural ( and in this case, literal ) narratives.

Given my own experiences, I feel proud that I am able to use my work to examine the troubles that everyone feels-- even if they don't wear it on the outside.

Sonichu Episode 11 Critical Review: CWCVille the Confederacy

2010-11-14T21:52:00.000-08:00

The Horrible Hate Crime, Here

Even the early Sonichu comics aren't free of Christian Weston Chandler's problems. The formal introduction of the Chaotic Combo has them come together to stop a common threat-- Black Sonichu, who steals the all-powerful Sunstone from Flame the Sunbird*. The formations of hero teams are often contrived, but the circumstances here take the ham-handed coincidence up to eleven-- as Black Sonichu escapes with the Sunbird's Sunstone, he literally bumps into four of the five ersatz Sonichus, giving them reason to meet. Magi-Chan joins up with them after their chatter bothers his meditation, and the original Sonichu isn't far behind. What results is six electric hedgehogs against one, which is about as contested a battle as the Hulk vs. Woody Allen

What makes the circumstances especially humorous/horrifying is the insistence Chandler has on referring to Black Sonichu as black-- the other Sonichus calling him " Blackie " or " that Black guy ". Since that's his only distinguishing characteristic from the the other Sonichus, one might see this as unintentional. However, racism is one of Christian Weston Chandler's many despicable traits. He doesn't hate black people as openly as he hates gays or other autistics ( especially those with the Asperger's Syndrome diagnosis ), but he does make it clear that his Love Quest doesn't include non-white women, he portrays the head Jerkops as scary black men, and one of his most infamous videos has him scream the N-Word at a troll. It's debatable how conscious Chandler's race hatred is, because he will deny being a racist if he is given that label, and a lot of it he just picked up from his less-than-tolerant Southern upbringing ( and refuses to correct, since Chandler's most fatal flaw is his unwillingness to admit any wrongdoing ).

However, there's a really unsettling subtext to the fact that the Black Sonichu is the one being beaten by a mob of brighter-colored Sonichus. It's even worse when you consider Black Sonichu's origin-- he was literally cloned to serve Naitsirhc's evil whims, and has never been given the opportunity to exercise free will. He's simply doing what he has to in order to survive, since he would certainly be terminated if he disobeyed Naitsirhc. At least the Chaotic Combo use stun force instead of inflicting a killing blow, but they've still treated him as persona non grata, even though he doesn't have the power to fight off six copies of himself.

What's even more unintentionally disturbing is the fact that Chandler will eventually have Black Sonichu reform, but in doing so change his name to " BLAKE Sonichu ". Chandler allegedly did this to quash the accusations of racism, but the fact that he surrenders his color identity upon converting to " good " is a troubling coincidence. Of course, CWCVille isn't a place for diversity, because that would involve the introduction of new ideas. This is the paradise of a man who specifies that the woman who finally takes his virginity should be white-- as though he's in a position to be choosy about who will lower themselves to an unemployable man-child who lives with his parents and carries the stench of sweat, grease, and the Axe body spray that he uses as an alternative to bathing.

Oh, and if you thought that the racial implications of this chapter were bad enough, Chandler posts an mock advertisement for a hotline that lonely men can call for a free girlfriend. That CWCVille apparently has a state-sponsored prostitution service is bad enough, but for some reason, the ad says that if you call now, late, or early, you will instead get a monkey. This was probably an attempt at " random access humor ", using non sequitirs in lieu of actual jokes. At least I hope it is, because state-sponsored beastiality is even worse.

And now I go to take five consecutive showers before writing the next critical review, which is one of the dreaded Sub-Episodes...

* A character who doesn't appear to be outright plagiarized, meaning that he/she will have little to no page-time.

Sonichu Episode 10 Critical Review

2010-11-10T21:06:00.001-08:00

Descent Into The Dark Heart of CWCVille

The " Sonichu Babies " story introduces an important fixture of the Sonichu storytelling engine-- the Chaotic Combo. If Sonichu is the avatar of Christian Weston Chandler's hopes and dreams, the man ( or electric hedgehog ) he wishes he could be, then the Chaotic Combo are his circle of friends. But they're not friends so much as groupies and imitators. The members of the Chaotic Combo are transparent copies of Sonichu, with color coding and minor traits being the only distinctions. They even carry " Sonichu " and " Rosechu " as surnames-- the origin story has them spawned from the same Chaos Energy rainbow that turned a Pikachu into Sonichu, refracted clones of the original.

It's suitable that a character who is already a plagiarized copy associate with characters who are themselves copies of him-- talking xeroxes so faded that Sonichu looks better by contrast.

But Chandler still maintains the delusion that he is creating a series that will be a merchandising phenomenon, as opposed to a complex psychodrama starring his baggage with guest appearances by bored internet trolls. So we get obligatory origin stories for each of the Chaotic Combo, starting with them as " Sonees " and " Rosees " ( the infant form of the Sonichu/Rosechu species, and a merchandising hook as transparent and nauseating as the Ewoks ). The distinctions between the stories are based on the colors and " elemental " characteristics of the copies, stealing from the rock-paper-scissors combat system that drives the Pokemon games. However, each story foreshadows the psychological horrors to come, as seen with...

-- Wild Sonichu, the green Grass male. We see a page of him in his baby Sonee form, toddling around and saying " Sonee " in an infantile tone. Since CWCVille is an inherently childish setting, the super-infantilized Sonee goes past being cute and into being nauseating, and even hideous. Fortunately for us, within the next page ( following an " Eventually " caption "* )

-- Bubbles Rosechu, the blue Water female. She is adopted by a female Swampert Pokemon, and stumbles around in her Rosee form until a whale suddenly appears to drop a boulder upon her new mother. Bubbles immediately matures and rescues the Swampert. Bubbles doesn't really develop any character despite being another female and the blue part of the rainbow group, but the Boulder-Dropping Whale becomes a fan-favorite. The incidental characters in Sonichu gained a following as a means to spite Chandler and his main cast-- a webcomic called " Moon Pals " was even made to chronicle their adventures. Unfortunately, the Boulder-Dropping Whale failed in his noble mission to exterminate the Rosee spawn and her protector.

-- Angelina Rosechu, the white Flying female. She is adopted by a convent of nuns and is raised to be a devout Catholic electric hedgehog. The fact that nuns are traditionally chaste and do not approve of pre-marital sex makes her presence in the coming comics hypocritically hilarious.

-- Punchy Sonichu, the red Fighting male. He is raised in a dojo by a sensei who makes a lot of " random access humor " references. This term is what Chandler uses to refer to his style of comedy, which consists of random non sequitirs. Chandler is a huge fan of Family Guy and the Adult Swim cartoons, which are about as mature as his tastes go. While " edgier " than traditional Western Saturday morning cartoons, they still reflect an immature mindset, using cartoon characters to do shocking and random things. They tend not to have any meaningful characterization or narrative structure, and treat concepts like sex and excrement as new and shocking. Except when they do it, it can actually be funny-- Chandler's " random access " is truly random, and just comes across as forced and obnoxious.

-- Magi-Chan Sonichu, the purple Psychic male. He is raised in isolation to focus his psionic powers, observing human culture from outside media. This is an excellent approximation of the way Chandler understands the world, learning of mature concepts through scatological late-night cartoons, morality from children's hero shows, and relationships from romantic comedies and internet porn.

If I seem like I'm rushing through this, it's because the narrative structure here does the same-- we are given the supporting copies of Sonichu, we are given token backstories in the pretense that they are independent characters, and then we are forced to move on. But remaining to flesh out the Chaotic Combo would mean that this is an organic narrative that fleshes out its characters. And Sonichu isn't about trivial things such as " plot " and " characters "-- they're just the flimsy foundation of Chandler's refuge from reality. And once his infantile utopia is besieged by the outside world....well, that's when things get interesting.

* The time frame for this is ambiguous; how long did it take for these characters to mature? The original Sonichu and Rosechu evolved from mature Pokemon forms, but these characters started as infants, yet immediately matured to adulthood. Unless time flows differently in separate regions of CWCVille...

The New Avengers Cartoon, And Why I Love Voice Actors

2010-11-07T20:29:00.001-08:00

Even more than live actors, voice actors get around....with different roles, that is. And it never ceases to entertain me how many different characters can be attached to a voice actor, especially one with a distinctive voice. For example, with the new Avengers cartoon...

The Jarvis AI ( Phil Lamarr ) is also Vamp, the bisexual, flamenco-dancing, nigh-unkillable villain from Metal Gear Solids 2 and 4. Presumably, he's planning to hijack the Iron Man suit so he can go down on the Avengers Mansion's silverware.

Rhodey ( Bumper Robinson ) is Bumblebee from the Transformers Animated show. I really hope he'll call Tony " Boss-Bot " at some point.

The Wasp ( Colleen O'Shaughnessey ) is Konohamaru, the tag-a-long kid from Naruto. Aside from the different genders, they're equally annoying and largely useless.

The Black Widow ( Vanessa Marshall ) is Irwin, the nerdy sidekick from the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. Hail Hydra, yo!

The Red Skull ( Steve Blum ) is, amongst other characters, Leeron, the flamboyantly homosexual tech guy from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. He certainly gave the Third Reich a hard, manly twist.

Amora the Enchantress ( Kari Wahlgren ) is, amongst others, Haruko Haruhara, guitar-slinging space-wacko from the dub of the even wackier anime FLCL ( Fooly Cooly ). And lo, was Midgard besieged by a pox of vespas..

Dr. Leonard Samson ( Cam Clarke ) is Liquid Snake from the first Metal Gear Solid. Hopefully the gamma treatment will compensate for his DAMNED INFERIOR GENES!

Any others?

Sonichu Sub-Episode 3 Critical Review: Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

2010-11-02T21:16:00.000-07:00

Explaining The Joke, Here

....a Dean of Student Affairs at the Piedmont Virginia Community College*, by the name of Mary Lee Walsh, is confronted with a student creating a problem. The student, one Christian Weston Chandler, is soliciting newsletters based on his plagiarized children's comic strip that explicitly ask for a boyfriend-free girl, and publicly carrying a sign doing the same. The dean sees him as a public nuisance at the lowest, but since the dean is also a member of the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance, perhaps she suspects something worse about this creepy little student.

So the dean reprimands the student and tells him to stop spamming the campus with his desperation. But the student ignores her warning and continues to carry his " Attraction Sign " and distribute his " Sonichu's News Dash " papers. The dean, obviously annoyed by her authority being ignored, calls the student into her office, and orders him to stop. She uses very blunt but accurate language, saying that the student would never get a girlfriend this or any other way. He angrily screams at her, but all it does is get him expelled for a year.

But the dean doesn't hear the last of the student. The student works the dean into his plagiarized children's comic strip as an evil witch, who spends her spare time plotting against love itself. The student, on the other hand, is reinvented as the hero who fights for the sake of love. After a tense** fight, she is defeated when the hero teams up with his plagiarized cartoon " son ", pooling their powers together for a massive energy blast that defeats her. For now.

But it doesn't end there. While the dean doesn't dignify the student with a response, the group of internet users devoted to following the student's terrible life and work take note. And seeing the badly drawn image of the evil witch Mary Lee Walsh, they interpret her golden helmet as a shock of blonde hair with horns, and draw her as a sexy succubus. Some fan stories even cast her as a heroine, fighting against the corrupt regime of the student's ego-based imaginary town.

So the elderly dean of a southern US community college, simply by doing her job, becomes turned into an online sex symbol that doubles as a troll symbol. And here's the punchline...

This isn't a joke. All this shit actually happened.

And nothing I say can top that.

* You can find the full story here; yes, an entire Wiki has become devoted to Chandler's failures.
** If by " Tense ", you mean " badly drawn Pokemon moves followed by Mary Lee Walsh tapping Chris-Chan Sonichu on his neck, causing him to revert back to Chris-Chan in the dumbest weakness since Thor turning back to mortal Dr. Don Blake if he lets go of his hammer for 60 seconds ", then yes, it was quite " tense ".
*** Courtesy of Sonichu Finale, one of many entertaining fan works that redeem Chandler's " creations " with good writing and art. And one of many fan works replete with Metal Gear Solid references.

Sonichu Episode 9 Critical Review: Dark Graduation

2010-10-30T22:35:00.000-07:00

Psychological Hang-Ups The Way You Like Them Here

The Chris-Chan/Sarah Hammer/Wes Iseli love triangle continues this issue, as Christian Weston Chandler continues to bend time and space towards a favorable reality. And in doing so, he introduces the arch-villain of Sonichu, Count Graduon, whose name is a reference to Christian Weston Chandler's high school graduation.

The fact that a story about one man's refusal to grow up and take responsibility for his life would have a villain named after a rite of passage into an adulthood is stupefyingly appropriate.

Count Graduon is represented as a purple staff containing an evil spirit-- the Cherokee and Wasabi clans apparently teamed up to banish him to an inanimate prison. While the symbolism inserted by Chandler doesn't go further than the name, the meaning attached to Graduon runs much deeper, like everything else about Sonichu. Graduon is a perfect representation of the personal and cosmic forces that Chandler believes oppose him; while he has a name, he does not have a body. He is a force that is attached to an inanimate object. But he directs the efforts against Chandler, coordinating efforts of the Jerkops, Mary Lee Walsh, and the other " trolls " who deny Chandler immediate pleasure and ask him to do things that might cause pain.

The symbolism is even more telling ( and horrifying ) due to what Chandler attributes to his high school graduation. He sees it as the turning point in his life, the point where things started to go downhill. Chandler has said that he expected to receive an award for his art at the ceremony, and when he didn't, he started crying. It is certainly understandable that a young person, especially a socially awkward one who'd been coddled by his parents due to his " special needs " labeling**, would become visibly upset if they did not receive the recognition they felt due. However, the disappointments in our life are the moments where we are given opportunity to show our true strength. At that moment, Chandler could have,

A.) Done what every person ( autistic or not ) has to do, intellectually accept that life isn't fair, and try to make the best of his situation, or

B.) Create a comic strip universe inhabited by childhood heroes where he is treated like the very special flower he wants to believe he is, and refuse to leave there.

Guess which one he did? Instead of pushing back against the circumstances of graduation, Chandler DID bottle them up in a cartoon super-villain, and constrict their overt activities to sending giant golem monsters after CWCVille. Except that adulthood is too big a concept to be adequately summarized as a single bad guy, shaped like a glowing purple dildo***.

But that's the unwitting central conflict of Sonichu-- Chandler tries to create a paradise where adult problems become manageable villains, but only creates more problems for himself as he tries to simplify/ignore his challenges. The triangle between Chris-Chan, Sarah Hammer, and Wes Iseli is another example; Sarah dumps Wes for attacking her " best friend ", and teams up with Chris-Chan to fight Graduon's monster. But Wes is still around, acting mopey and hopeless until Chris tells him to snap out of it ( because Chris-Chan's ephemeral infatuations are apparently a worse loss than Wes actually being dumped by a woman with whom he was in an adult relationship ). And after the battle, when the two take a taxi home****, Chris-Chan makes a point of " being there " for Sarah, listening to her talk and playing the best friend ( while obviously waiting for her to jump his bones ) only to find that she still regards him as nothing more than a friend. Because being honest about his feelings would be a risk for Chris-Chan, and CWCVille is a place which is supposed to be free of risks-- even if that keeps Chris-Chan from the female contact he so badly wants.

The sad part is that is that Chandler ends the chapter with a tribute to the real world Sarah Hammer, his childhood friend. Uncharacteristically, he's actually acknowledging the good times they had together as kids, and mentioning specific instances that he fondly remembered. This is emotion that evokes a genuine feeling of loss, untainted the sexual frustration that warps everything else in Sonichu. It's also a reminder that underneath his outer shell of childhood trappings and adolescent libido, there are redeeming qualities that remain in Christian Weston Chandler. Of course, every time they surface, he immediately buries them under more outlandish behavior, and never learns any lessons.

* Who I'll get to in the review of the next sub-episode.

** There isn't a hell painful enough for Bob and Barbara Chandler, whose enabling of Chris catastrophically ruined a child who had as much chance of success as any. It's known that Chandler's mother buys his clothes for him, and speculated that she picks those ridiculous clown colors so that he'll appear more " special " and thus won't face adult repercussions for his actions. It's also known that Chandler's father encourages him to remain on welfare for disability, despite a lack of any known impairments that couldn't be corrected by a tall glass of Grow The Fuck Up. Chandler at least garners pity; these people are simply reprehensible.

*** This is one of many things that makes Chandler's homophobia doubly hilarious.

**** In a badly drawn taxi so lopsided that it could never roll in a straight line. Like Greg Land, Chandler's drawings liberally borrow/plagiarize from other sources; unlike Greg Land, he can't even copy his references accurately.

Ruby's World Happy Halloween Cosplay, 2010!

2010-10-30T19:32:00.000-07:00

For two years I've been doing my webcomic Ruby's World, and for the second time in a row, I've done a Halloween cosplay image, with my characters dressed as other characters from comics and animations. In order, they are..

-- Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story characters, a character who ( in the first film anyway ) is troubled by his artificial nature. This was a deliberately idiosyncratic choice, to reflect not just Opal's lack of social awareness, but her flexible gender as well ).

-- The original Wolverine from the 70's Hulk, wearing a costume which might be construed as badass, but is more likely completely ridiculous ( much like Jens' personal conflicts ).

-- Rei Ayanami from the landmark anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, an extremely quiet and isolated girl with a mysterious nature ( Rei's was revealed in extremely unsettling fashion; Alexis' has yet to be divulged. Yet. )

-- Solid Snake from the peerless Metal Gear Solid series of video games, a cloned super-soldier whose traumatic life has left him emotionally discombobulated and extremely cold, and whose stealth catsuit attire makes grown men question their heterosexuality. I'm not sure if the latter has been true regarding Jiro, but if any readers have had that experience, I won't judge.

-- Cally Calhoun from the recently launched webcomic Spy6teen, written by Tim Simmons, with art by DJ Keawekane, colors by Lisa Moore, letters by Brant Fowler, and story edits by D.J. Kirkbride. Starring another seemingly ordinary teen girl given super-powers and thrust into a larger conspiracy, with red hair to boot. The comic hasn't been around long, but it has such a high level of technical craft and collaborative skill that it deserves the shout-out. It updates weekly Here.

I'll also be bringing more major news regarding Ruby's World and its upcoming new direction. And more Sonichu reviews, of course. It works to my advantage that I put news about my comic following my Sonichu reviews, because no matter what I put out, it will seem like pure genius compared to Christian Weston Chandler's creative abortions.

Sonichu Episode 8 Critical Review: Fail is a Triangle

2010-10-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

This is where the horror starts

In this episode of the Anchuent Prophecy Saga, we are introduced to Sarah Hammer and Wes Iseli, more characters who are based on real people. Sarah is Christian Weston Chandler's childhood friend, who he lost touch with after age 10. Wes Iseli is her boyfriend, which makes him CWCVille Public Enemy #1. Both of them also have ancient destinies dating back to the era of the Cherokian Clan; Sarah's ancestor was the wife of Chris-Chan's ancestor, while Wes' predecessor was head of the rival Wasabi Clan. Sarah's ancestor at least looks somewhat like a Native American woman, if you can call a blonde-haired blue-eyed white girl in Pocahontas cosplay " Native American ". Wes' Wasabi Clan ancestor, however, just looks like a Pope in orange.

In short; this is an alternate history where the Cherokee were Caucasians who wore Greco-Roman gold armor, wrote in Hieroglyphics, and were the arch-enemies of a clan who dressed like Catholic clergy and took their name from a spicy condiment in Japanese cuisine. This is either an extremely clever mixing of world cultures, or an extremely lazy handling of the author's thin sliver of Cherokee blood. I'm tending to believe it's the latter-- call me crazy if you want.

Stories dealing with ancestral destiny usually tend to have the characters question the old ways, and try to forge their own futures. This scenario implies that the characters ( and authors ) question the seemingly conventional wisdom placed before them. This, of course, is not how Chandler handles it. Instead, he takes the forces of destiny within his story and uses them to ensure that he will defeat Wes in the battle for Sarah's heart. The extent to which Chandler carries this is almost ingenious, creating a set of circumstances that rob both Sarah and Wes of any agency without denying them the pretense of free will.

This is a love triangle with the powers that be balanced squarely against Wes' point, even more than they favor Chris-Chan. If Wes were to win Sarah back, he would have to...

A.) Not be tied to the losing side of history. Presumably the entire Wasabi clan was wiped out, without even any survivors on CWCville-sponsored reservations. Wes says that their clan cried Trails of Tears* over losing claim to the Cherokian Crown, suggesting that in this alternate history the Cherokee were the ones to commit genocide against the Wasabi, via forced exile. Wes is Jacob Black, forever fated to watch with a broken heart and a bluish scrotum as his true love goes for the Cullens, the thoroughly European vampires that eradicated his race.

B.) Find a different arena in which to compete with Chris-Chan. In the real world, Wes has the clear advantage as a prospective mate, since he's a self-employed magician available for any festivities, as opposed to being, well, Christian Weston Chandler. But in CWCVille, the measure of a man's superiority is their ability to fight with the ancient martial art of " Being an Anthropomorphic Hedgehog ". In this realm, Wes-Li Sonichu is just a copy of Chris-Chan Sonichu ( himself a copy of Sonichu, who of course is a copy of Sonic and Pikachu ). And since Chris-Chan can bend the rules of time and space so that a Yu-Gi-Oh playing card actually becomes a dangerous trap, any extra skills that Wes may or may not have are moot.

C.) Not show any pretense that he wants to keep his girlfriend. While Sarah and Wes have since split up ( though Wes is currently married ), they were a couple at the time this comic was drawn, with Chandler looking on jealously. In Sonichu's universe, Chris' fixation on wanting to fuck his friend from elementary school is him being the hapless nice guy, while Wes wanting to keep this stranger with no capacity to move on is him being a controlling, jeaous boyfriend. Wes' words are twisted into a pledge of world domination, while Chris-Chan is in his own words, " pouring my heart about how I care for my best friend, while you did into your pot of greed **". Even Sarah's opinion is twisted into finding Chris-Chan's crush, one that persisted for the many years that the two were apart ( including all of puberty ) sweet and flattering.

D.) Treat Christian Weston Chandler with the credit he is due as a romantic rival. I.E. none, under normal circumstances. But " normal circumstances " are never something you expect within Chandler's mind...

* It's actually offensive that Chandler was familiar with the word, but didn't even bother to Google it to see that it referenced the government-sponsored murder of thousands of humans, not the invented heritage of a white boy who wants to be special.
** I have to give Chandler credit here-- he's great at delivering melodrama so overly bad that it's good. Were he translating video games in the late 1990's, he would have found a calling as the Master of Unlocking.

Sonichu Episode 7 Critical Review

2010-10-23T22:03:00.000-07:00

Click here for the strip

One of the most important points I want to make in this series is that Christian Weston Chandler isn't just an isolated freak. All of his bizarre theories and hang-ups can be found in other people, both neurotypical and autistic, and especially in internet fandoms. Chandler is just a special case because he's cut himself so completely off from everything BUT his hobbies and his neuroses, so they inbreed and mutate into the compelling train wreck that is Sonichu.

Case in point: The Anchuent* Prophecy introduced in Episode 7. This is where Sonichu is literally replaced by Chris-Chan as the star of the comic, and where Chris-Chan's grand purpose within CWCVille is revealed. Chris-Chan is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, a Mary Sue character, an author avatar created in an idealized image. And he has all the typical traits of a Mary Sue. The story is devoted to proving that Christian Weston Chandler is a very special flower.

The plot involves Sonichu finding an ancient tomb in the CWCVille woods guarded by a mysterious old man. He brings it to Chris-Chan's attention, and while reading the heiroglyphics, Chris-Chan meets the ghost of his Cherokee ancestor. Chris is granted the power of Chris-Chan Sonichu-- this is the origin of his transformation in Sub-Episode 1, where he renders his flagship character completely and utterly irrelevant.

You can practically use Chris-Chan Sonichu as a textbook case for the Mary Sue, a character found in awful writing everywhere. Let's use the ;TVTropes checklist of Common Mary Sue Traits

-- Chris-Chan is portrayed as pure and incorruptible. All of the denizens of CWCVille, human or hedgehog, love their mayor. His only weakness is his inability to get a girlfriend, but Chandler presents his avatar's romantic woes as the result of the cruel world in which he lives. Hanna toyed with him because she was a bitch, and his attempts to find a mate at the mall were only hindered by the Jerkop conspiracy.

-- Chris-Chan is all-powerful. The Anchuent Power that his ancestor bestows upon him isn't defined, so he's basically in God Mode. The Curse-Ye-Ha-Me-Ha is powerful enough to warp reality against someone's welfare. Like the Scarlet Witch in recent years of Avengers comics, Chris-Chan's power can do anything except get him the kind of relationship he wants, which causes his descent into madness. Except that the Scarlet Witch wants her dead children back instead of just getting laid, and is actually treated as criminally insane. Perhaps the next Sonichu issue will have Chris-Chan declare " No More Boyfriends " and make himself the only male on Earth. Even then it wouldn't do him any good.

-- Chris-Chan is striking and uniquely handsome in his appearance. Granted, this is entirely in the context of the comic, where everyone's proportions warp and weft based on how much or how little time Chandler spent on the panel. But he's got a unique wadrobe, gaudy jewelry, and special eyes. In real life, Chandler has mild heterochromia, with one eye colored slightly differently than the other. But in the comic they're sapphire blue and emerald green, further proof that Chris-Chan is a Very Special Flower.

-- Chris-Chan is the hero of the story thanks to the powers of destiny. In fact, the Cherokee heritage that empowers Chris-Chan makes him so important that he can retroactively change the entire culture to suit his own whims. In Sonichu, the " Cherokian Clan " consists of Caucasians in gold armor and purple silk, who have recorded their Empire in ancient tombs with Heiroglyphics. Plenty of Americans claim that the slight sliver of Cherokee heritage in their genetics makes them special, allowing them to identify as Native American as much or as little as they want-- and it invariably becomes " as little " when it's dealing with the circumstances forced upon actual Cherokees. Chris-Chan takes it even further, identifying fully with his Cherokee heritage by completely disregarding any and all traits of actual Cherokee culture. He doesn't even use common Native American stereotypes, like feathered head-dresses or communion with nature ( unless you count deformed hedgehogs as nature ).

The upside to this is that Chris-Chan's identification with Native American culture isn't stereotypical, so much as just outright stupid. The only people who should be offended by the Ancient Chief of the Cherokian Clan are fans of Yu-Gi-Oh, since Chris-Chan basically stole the Ancient Egypitan backstory, and thus people who watch Yu-Gi-Oh or play the card game will forever have the image of Christian Weston Chandler tainting their fandom.

-- Chris-Chan is literally modelled after his creator. The literal aspect makes what is strongly implied by other fanfic insert characters a direct statement. And since people from Chandler's real life will be introduced next chapter, it gets even more of a ridiculous attempt to skew the world to the author's whims...

* Pronounced " An- CHU- Ent Prophecy ", though most people assumed it was just a misspelling, like 90% of other words Chandler types.

Sonichu Sub-Episode 2 Critical Review: How to Lose a Girl in Zero Seconds

2010-10-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

The madness starts here, click on the images to proceed

Aaand now we go back to the " classic " Sonichu, the style that obscures its plagiarism with its warped recounting of Christian Weston Chandler's personal problems. The second sub-episode recounts another installment in Chris-Chan's Love Quest. While loitering at the mall ( apparently having cursed the Jerkops away this time ), eating his eight daily Chicken McNuggets and waiting for a girl to come up to him, a girl DOES come up to him. A blonde woman named Hanna** invites him for coffee, and while is able to maintain his composure enough to agree, he leaps for joy against a rainbow background* while declaring his Love Quest over. Chris' hedgehog friends are equally happy to see Chris share his Sonichu-themed world with Hanna. However, Rosechu overhears Hanna gloating over the phone to her friends about how fun it is to yank Chris' chain, and immediately tells Chris. Chris confronts Hanna, and upon finding this to be true, screams a massive no as his heart level is reduced to 15%. " ***Fortunately " for Hanna, he's willing to send Hanna an email telling her that he forgives her and is still open to the possibility of them dating.

At first glance this seems to be another affirmation of Chris-Chan's virtues, painting him as the victim with the woman rejecting him portrayed as a manipulative harpy. This actually happened to Chandler in real life, and the only substantial difference in the fictionalization's plot is that Rosechu tells Chris the truth, instead of a " gal-pal ". The real-world Hanna is actually as cruel as Chandler makes her out to be; however, the event reveals the faults in Chris' dating methods, and how he unwittingly sets himself up for this sort of trolling time and time again.

For somebody who wants a girlfriend so badly, Chandler has done tremendously little to actually learn how he should best go about finding a mate. The sub-episode's altered reality only serves to highlight Chandler's willful ignorance and subsequently warped perspective, because...

A.) Chris-Chan doesn't get involved with any outside activities during his Love Quest. The most he's done to put himself out there is to loiter in a public place. And even then he's just waiting to be noticed, eating his eight McNuggets and playing his DS.

B.) Chris-Chan puts all his expectations into every girl he meets. This is hard for most single people to control, but most of them intellectually realize that relationships do take time to build. Chris immediately-- and literally, in the most homo-erotic way possible-- jumps to the conclusion that he's found his soulmate right after an initial coffee date is arranged.

C.) Chris-Chan doesn't reflect on whether any of his behaviors are socially acceptable. What is documented of Chandler in real life shows that his fashion sense and conversation style are EXACTLY what we see here. He regularly wears a shirt resembling Ernie from Sesame Street, he brings up Sonichu in every conversation, and he spams all of his personal effects with the plagiarized kid show mash-up. There are plenty of geeky men who are able to attract women, but they are aware that their interests aren't necessarily socially acceptable, and are able to poke fun at themselves. Chandler doesn't even think this far. If Chandler could give himself an honest assessment, he'd realize that the gaudy Sonichu medallion he wears is more effective than any chastity belt, and a woman who comes up to him with a sudden invitation is probably trolling.

D.) Most damningly, Chris-Chan doesn't leave his own little world, even when trying to embrace others. He " practices " dating by playing Sprung, a DS dating simulation. He's trying to take real-life advice from a video game designed for entertainment purposes only. Perhaps he was drawn to this because it was available for the DS handheld, meaning he didn't have to leave his comfort zone. But instead of using the advice of real friends and family, self-help books, or even reality shows like " Blind Date " , Chandler goes for a low-quality*** dating sim. It's also worth noting that Hanna only gets one line of dialogue when they're getting to know each other, saying that she's a fan of Fight Club director " Chuck Paladuck ". First of all, it's Chuck Palahniuk, and secondly, he wrote the original NOVEL that inspired the book; the movie was directed by David Fincher. Apparently Chandler wasn't paying attention to what she was saying, and was too lazy to use Wikipedia as a fact check.

Chandler actually captures the truth in this installment-- that any human female who enters his candy-colored atavistic world and isn't his mother is probably screwing with him. But his intention was to set himself up as the innocent victim, not the clueless sucker.

* Chandler went back and editted this image. The new version is a significant improvement, as it looks cleaner and more consistent, and doesn't exaggerate further than even a cartoony style will allow. Mind you, it's still crude and childish, just less so. Why Chandler chose this image and not others in the strip is probably because of the homo-erotic symbolism attached to rainbows, which he couldn't reconcile with his vicious homophobia.
** Chandler also retconned the names to distance them from real people, as per the advice of a troll pretending to be Nintendo R&D head Shigeru Miyamoto. In the modified version, " Hanna " is " Fandanna ". Everything else is the same, including her spherical Peanuts-gang head.
*** Even putting aside the ridiculousness of measuring his romantic feelings in a " Heart Level ", Chris-Chan apparently thinks that being rejected by a girl you knew all of a few hours is heartbreaking.
**** GameRankings Aggregate Score for Sprung: 48%. But being a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog, a game being completely terrible never stopped Chandler from buying it, yes?

Sonichu Episodes 4-6 Review: The Black Sonichu Saga And The Vestigial Remnants of Sonic

2010-10-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

Read Here

I'm reviewing " the Black Sonichu Saga " as one lump installment because, frankly, there's not much to say here. This is still the point where Chris-Chan's Caligula-like reign over CWCVille doesn't totally dominate Sonichu, and as such, the stories can be read as just another awful fanfic crossover, instead of a surreal documentation of Christian Weston Chandler's ongoing nervous breakdown. Everything here is plagiarized; Black Sonichu is an inferior copy of Shadow the Hedgehog, himself a transparently grim-and-gritty copy of Sonic the Hedgehog. His construction was a joint effort by the Pokemon villain Giovanni ( leader of Team Rocket ), and Sonic's arch-nemesis Dr. Robotnik. His black shade is explained as accidental, as his creator Bill the Scientist spilled Cherry Cola over the Sonichu DNA.*

So yeah, there's no gripping narrative here, intentional or not. The swindled Sonic and Pokemon villains make an evil Sonichu clone, said evil Sonichu clone kidnaps Rosechu, Sonichu and Sonic the Hedgehog ( also swindled from his copyrighted environment ) team up to fight Black Sonichu and Metal Sonichu ( a derivative of Metal Sonic, another evil Sonic doppelganger ). The day is saved, with Black Sonichu defeated, Metal Sonichu retreating to the moon, and Rosechu getting to have girl talk with Amy Rose.

Christian Weston Chandler has repeatedly tried to counter accusations of plagiarism by saying that Sonichu is a parody. But this isn't making fun of Sonic or Pokemon, or even using them to try and make some sort of point. This is just a poorly written, poorly drawn regurgitation of those series' formulas. The worst fact is that even though both Sonic and Pokemon have comic adaptations, Chandler chose to plagiarize from the animated medias, the games and the cartoons. He has no grasp of sequential storytelling; he uses massive text walls to dump information upon his readers, and those salvos of Comic Sans MS usually don't even have full figures attached-- he cheats and has the speaker be a severed head floating in white space. He takes on the Pokemon style of having characters scream the names of their moves while they attack, but instead of utilizing the page space for dramatic angles, Chandler crams the action into little panels the size and ( poorly approximated ) shape of a Game Boy screen. Presumably he doesn't use a ruler, or even use the line tool in Photoshop to create borders.

The only thematic value the " Black Sonichu Saga " has is that Black Sonichu becomes a major character later on, and there's some interest in having the original Sonic the Hedgehog meet his his hideous half-Pokemon counterpart. To Chandler's credit, Sonichu holds up okay as a character when compared to his inspiration. Of course, given how Sonic's games have been infected by superfluous and uninspired supporting characters over the past decade or so, that's not a compliment to Chandler so much as an insult to Sega. Were he divorced from Chandler's problems, Sonichu would fit right in with Amy Rose, Shadow, Big the Cat, Silver the Hedgehog, Rouge the Bat, Cream the Rabbit, and any number of other annoying spin-offs.

Sonichu Sub-Episode 1 Critical Review: Magically Realistic

2010-10-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

Here Begins the Jerkop-Tastrophe

The Sonichu Sub-Episodes are where the Christian Weston Chandler phenomenon truly starts. Initially they were categorized outside of the main Sonichu chronology because they did not actually involve Sonichu-- they instead dealt with Chandler himself, and focused on his own trials and tribulations. Yet they did so within the Sonichu continuity-- Chandler's avatar, the mayor of CWCVille, was the one experiencing his author's problems, and responding to them with fictional solutions.

These stories were in large part why people became fascinated with Sonichu-- not just because of the absurdity of Chris-Chan's stories, but the fact that the absurdity was accentuated in direct contrast with Chandler's real life. The premise of the first sub-promise has Chris-Chan hanging out at the mall, making himself " available " for any girl who wants to be his true love. However, a " Jerkop " ( Chandler's not-so-subtle reference to local mall security, a portmanteau of jerk and cop ) tells him to stop loitering and accuses him of loitering.

Now, This Actually Happened in the Charlottesville Fashion Square during September of 2004, where Chandler was disciplined and eventually banned for loitering. What's more, Chandler was reportedly more active in his real-world Love Quest, by throwing out a red construction paper heart attached to a string towards eligible women. After months of being a public nuisance at best and a sexual harasser at worst, Chandler received what is definitely an appropriate consequence for his actions. But through the power of fiction, Chandler has created an alternate reality in which events occurred somewhat differently.

" Somewhat differently " being an understatement. In the comic, the Jerkop is an evil authoritarian devoted to squelching Chris-Chan's love quest, out of an apparent disdain for love itself. When he tries to detain the love-questing loiter, Chris-Chan activates the power of his Sonichu medallion* and transforms into Chris-Chan Sonichu, a blue version of his " son ". The Jerkop transforms into an armored warrior, but is not only defeated by Chris, but utterly ruined. Chris-Chan uses his " Curse-Ye-Ha-Me-Ha " attack ( inspired by the Kame-Ha-Me-Ha move from the Dragon Ball Z manga and anime ) to infect the Jerkop with bad luck; immediately after the spell is cast, the Jerkop trips over a banana peel, breaks his glasses, and receives a phone call telling him that his wife has left with the kids and all their possessions. The Jerkop cries " My Soul Hurts "; Chris-Chan, however, comments that he's endured worse than losing one's family and fortunes-- the " shattering of his heart ". Because being stopped from soliciting is just that terrible.

The Sub-Episode sets the precedent for the genre in which Sonichu actually belongs; rather than a fantasy adventure for kids, it's a piece of magical realism. The fantastical elements linger around Chris-Chan's experiences without being treated as remarkable. Unlike most science fiction, the Sonichu webcomic does not try to explain its fantastical elements, or even set itself apart as a unique universe. Chris-Chan's world is just Christian Weston Chandler's world embellished to lead to a friendlier environment with potentially favorable outcomes.

Certainly this was not the intention of Chandler; he just wanted to work out his frustrations with his Crayola supplies, and used his " franchise " to do so. But in his catastrophic failure to tell a decent genre story, Chandler has hit upon the rich tradition of magical realism, seen mainly ( but not exclusively ) in Latin American literature. Authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, Sherman Alexie, and the Hernandez brothers have all written stories that use an ambiguously surreal landscape to reflect the human condition. Christian Weston Chandler joins this tradition, drawing upon his stunted maturity and warped perspective on dating to diffuse the boundaries between our shared reality and his own personal worldview. Except instead of dealing with ghosts and angels, his expansion of consciousness gives us electric hedgehogs and anti-love conspiracies.

If you don't believe me, read Junot Diaz's recent magical realism masterpiece, the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao! It, too deals with a romantically frustrated twentysomething fan who can't find a girlfriend because of a curse within his Dominican family's heritage. Since Chris-Chan works his tiny sliver of Cherokee heritage into Sonichu as a major plot point, you can read his story as a Charlottesville, VA variant of the " Fuku ". Granted, Diaz actually succeeded in what he intended to do, but postmodernism knows no boundaries.

Sonichu Episode 3 Critical Review: Eternal President of the Republic of CWCVille

2010-10-17T22:18:00.000-07:00

Witness the Work for your Self

Sonichu Episode 3 is an interesting transitional episode, marking the point where Sonichu stops being a children's adventure story and starts becoming the final stand for Christian Weston Chandler's besieged youth. On the one hand, it has a very clear good vs. evil plot, with the villainous Naitsirch ( Christian spelled backwards ) trying to kidnap Pokemon-- a standard plot for the show that contains half of Sonichu's conceptual DNA. On the other hand, it is the full introduction of the stage upon which Sonichu is set-- CWCVille, the city where Chris-Chan is mayor, and holds his office in the shopping mall.

Fan works regarding Sonichu often treat CWCVille as a totalitarian state, dominated by the promotion of its dictator's ego. Later issues of Sonichu will justify this, but for now CWCVille is a haven where Chris-Chan is treated with respect-- he's a benevolent authority figure who has the townsfolk's respect, even if the townsfolk are mostly mutant hedgehogs. But this is also the debut for Chris-Chan's major character arc-- his " love quest ". Chris-Chan is absolutely obsessed with finding a girlfriend, and treats the search for a relationship as a Herculean ordeal. Ironically, at this point he can't find a mate, even within a fictional world of his own creation. But his " son " Sonichu is there to give Chris-Chan words of encouragement. Even though Sonichu's thought balloons show that he doesn't really believe Chris-Chan will be successful, he still admires his creator's courage for continually trying.

At this point, Chris-Chan knows he is not the hero who gets the girl, but the sad sack nice guy who can't get past the " friend zone ". He uses the comic as a means of coping with this problem, by having the hero to whom he aspires validating him. Even though Sonichu calls Chris-Chan " father ", he's more of a good big brother figure here; Chris-Chan watches how Sonichu and Rosechu interact, and he sees the kind of relationship he thinks he should have. It's similar to a sick child seeing an actor dressed as their favorite cartoon character as part of a Make-a-Wish event, and having the actor tell the kid how important they are. Except that Chris-Chan is A.) a grown man and B.) has no serious illnesses.

Sonichu's relationship with Rosechu is another important development here, showcasing what Chandler believes a man-woman relationship should be. Rosechu exhibits every female gender stereotype in existence-- she wears pink, she shops to the point of running up a massive credit card debt, she has Sonichu lug her purchases around like a pack mule, and she's completely useless in an actual fight. This is a common phenomenon in boys' adventure stories, where we are told that the female is just as tough as the guys, but she never actually proves it ( at risk of upstaging the men ). Believe me when I say that the hypocrisy here is NOT an isolated incident for Sonichu; most of the perverse appeal of Sonichu comes from Chandler's extremely twisted conception of " women's rights ". The hypocrisy of trying to telling us that the main heroine is effective while showing her as helpless without her man is just the beginning.

But the story here is still a story that, hypothetically, could be taken as a straight adventure comic. Granted, it would be an adventure comic well below professional standards, due to the unique storytelling methods chandler employs. Chandler makes countless amateur mistakes; he uses Comic Sans MS as a font, his pages are infected with white space, and his panel borders are crudely drawn by hand. This isn't even beginning to describe the many errors present with his anatomy, perspective, reference material, and basic consistency. But since I'm analyzing Sonichu as a postmodern artistic statement for the sake of this academic exercise, I think it serves the story. The childish, Crayola-colored visuals accentuate the fact that CWCVille is an adult-free Neverland, and they make the instances where more mature issues slip in even more jarring.

Sonichu Episode 2 Critical Review: The OTP Syndrome, Electric Hedgehog Style

2010-10-17T09:10:00.000-07:00

Sonichu Episode 2 continues to set up the world of CWCVille, and while it's still relatively benign in its content, it predicts the relationship dynamics that would help make Sonichu an ironic favorite. What's unfortunate is that the " chemistry " between Sonichu and Rosechu is NOT a problem exclusive to Christian Weston Chandler's personal problems.

Like most Sonichu stories, the plot of episode 2 is about as deep as a wet piece of paper. While looking for food for his new, larger body, Sonichu realizes that he's lonely and needs a mate. At that exact moment, Rosechu walks by and Sonichu is immediately smitten. Later, Rosechu is talking with her Pokemon trainer Kel about how she needs a mate; they are conveniently interrupted by Sonichu arriving at the door. Not in the least bit perturbed by Sonichu having followed her home, Rosechu invites Sonichu in for dinner. A few days later, Sonichu and Rosechu look at the night sky together, exchange some truly awkward confessions of love, and kiss.

There is no conflict in Sonichu and Rosechu's relationship, even when they first meet. Their personalities complement each other and their goals are identical. The entire basis for the coupling is because Chandler considers them the One True Pairing. After all, Chandler is as much fan as creator, so if he wants to live vicariously through Sonichu, he'll make sure that the character has what Chandler considers an ideal relationship-- one based on " true love " and not any shared interests or experience.

Almost everything in Sonichu is lifted from other sources, and Rosechu is no different-- she is based on Amy Rose, the pink female hedgehog from the Sonic series. However, while Amy is smitten with Sonic, Sonic has never returned Amy's affections-- in canon, at least. Their dynamic is very much like a gender-flipped Pepe Le Pew cartoon, and Sonic's only kindness towards Amy is being willing to save her life when her stalkerish activities put her in danger. In other words, the canon Sonic/Amy dynamic is a relationship meant for comedy. But Chandler is just one of several fans who see an actual relationship between the two, with Sonic eventually returning the affections. In Chandler's " adaptation ", the variants of Sonic and Amy do not have any dramatic tension interfering with their romance. That they have romance is enough.

Any fandom will have readers who view the stories in context of the relationships, and wether or not they fit the reader's individual tastes a la a bingo game. They need not even have any basis in canon, and often don't; Sonic has the aforementioned Sonic/Amy, Avatar: The Last Airbender has Kitara/Zuko*, and Metal Gear Solid has Snake/Otacon**. The most egregious example may be Harry Potter, where Harry/Hermione 'shippers even threatened to boycott the books if Harry ended up with Ginny. It's worth noting that regardless of the pairings, NONE OF THESE SERIES ARE BASED EXCLUSIVELY ON ROMANCE. The interest in shipping comes from the personal baggage the fans collectively bring to the forums.

This is an odd phenomenon, and unfortunately, it's one that threatens to derail drama and creativity-- instead of reading stories because they're curious where the characters will end up, fans have strong preconceived notions of what they want to see, and won't accept anything else. It doesn't matter for Chandler that nobody cares about Sonichu and Rosechu's true love but him, because this world is his escapist paradise. Unfortunately, the phenomenon isn't restricted to the mass of neuroses and perversions that is Christian Weston Chandler-- just take a glance at the majority of fan fiction.***

One of the most interesting relationships that I've read in a mainstream comic is the X-Men pairing of Scott Summers and Emma Frost. This is because it's an active deconstruction of the nature of the OTP. While Scott and Jean Grey were the official pairing of the X-Men****, Grant Morrison had Scott come to realize that after all the hardship he'd been through in his life, he didn't want a perfect relationship. He found himself more comfortable with tempestuous ex-villainess Emma Frost, whose sins made her more relatable. The relationship began with an affair and was cemented with a kiss over Jean Grey's corpse, but so what? These are mutant pariahs whose profession has a high mortality rate. They aren't part of the culture that sets the terms for what acceptable love is, they aren't necessarily going to be drawn to conventional notions of relationships, and they're going to seize any chance at happiness they can get. Of course, this is antithetical to fandom logic, but it allows for more story options.

* Of course, because Aang/Kitara was an Official Coupling done with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer and logic of a fanfic parody, I can understand this.
** And Hideo Kojima has all but made this canon, since MGS4 ends with Snake living out his final days with Otacon and their adopted daughter Sunny. I can't even call Metal Gear a homoerotic series anymore, because between this, Ocelot being a secret hero motivated by his gay love for Big Boss, and the Big Boss/Miller slashfic missions in Peace Walker, Kojima is basically pre-empting the fandom with homosexual pairings.
*** There are many great fan fics, mind you. I want to make clear that just because the medium is used by terrible writers doesn't mean it has exclusively terrible writers. Some are even more inventive than the canon creators.
**** I often think of the main 'ship in my own comic as a reconstruction of the Scott/Jean dynamic, with genuine devotion and love being constantly challenged by the fact that Ruby and Jiro are two outcasts with troubled histories and no other real options.

Sonichu Episode 1 Critical Review: A Postmodern Masterpiece Begins

2010-10-16T17:52:00.000-07:00

I've discussed the fascinatingly pathetic phenomenon of Sonichu before, in context of the hilarious parody Asperchu. For something so utterly terrible, Christian Weston Chandler's much-derided webcomic has drawn more interest than many genuinely good stories. Most likely this is because Chandler* is so ready and unwittingly willing to embarrass himself, and the internet is quick to seize upon the bizarre and novel. But I think there's something to Sonichu that's more compelling than simply being a bad comic by a truly disturbing individual.**

Academia enjoys its alternate readings of works, and Sonichu need not be any different. Reading it as Chandler intended, as a children's adventure comic, means getting a badly written, badly drawn expression of an author's neuroses for an audience that could care less. But reading Sonichu as a parody ( and not " parody " in the way Chandler intends, as an excuse to swindle copyrighted characters ) shows a genuinely interesting psychodrama. Sonichu is an unintentionally brilliant commentary on genre fiction and its fans, and how people use stories and characters to cope with a complex world. Everybody does this, but Chandler's excesses illuminate fandom in a less-than-flattering light.

Even from the first Sonichu story, we see that the " electrical hedgehog Pokemon " is not the star of his strip. The very cover of " Issue Zero " has comic Chris-Chan telling Sonichu to " Zap out to the Extreme ", and Sonichu thanking his " father " for the instruction. The dynamic between Chris-Chan and Sonichu is meant to be father and son, but it goes without saying that biology would not allow a virgin birth of a cartoon animal to a human male. Instead, Sonichu serves as Chandler's idealized avatar-- if the Chris-Chan who appears in the comic is meant to represent Chandler's " dogged nice guy " conception of himself, then Sonichu is who Chandler wants to be, the children's hero who thrives within a never-maturing status quo.

Not only does Chris-Chan hog the cover, but he serves as the narrator for the debut story. He frames the story as its " intrusive creator ", telling us how the unwitting influence of Super Sonic transformed a Pikachu into Sonichu, and a Raichu into his female counterpart and girlfriend Rosechu. The Pikachu is literally just sitting there, about to be eaten by a monster, when he is transformed into Sonichu. After the transformation, he immediately fights and defeats the monster. He's cheered by the public, is impressed by his newfound power and ability to speak, and does not hesitate to rename himself " Sonichu ". Chris-Chan starts and ends this sequence, reminding us that Sonichu is his creation-- Chandler not only lives vicariously through Sonichu, but feeds off of the hypothetical adulation Sonichu receives, hoping that there will be a trickle-down fandom from his creation to him. He's creator and fan in one.

The episode concludes with a " Who's Who " list, involving Sonichu, Rosechu, the " Chaotic Combo " of other recolored hedgehog characters, the villains ( based on Chandler's real-life antagonists ), and three mysterious new Sonichus. There's not much to say about this as writing, since it's clearly telling and not showing. But it does reinforce the idea that Sonichu is about a status quo-- and in later chapters, that status quo finds itself under threat and has to resist.

More to Come..

* I'm referring to the real world Christian Weston Chandler by his last name, while the in-comic CWC will be called " Chris-Chan ".
** And this is NOT because of his autism. While Chandler may use his autism diagnosis as an attempt to excuse his problems, too many people bash him in context of his condition. Autism does not make people do any of the things Chandler has done, and calling him things like " that autistic fuck " or " autistic man-child " in the comments will not be tolerated.

Ruby's World Chapter 19 Up!

2010-10-06T17:45:00.000-07:00

Go Here

It's finally here; a long hard slough getting this up while experimenting with the format for the eventual relaunch, but it's here. Feedback would be appreciated.

Metal Gear Solid 4: The Best Disability Game Ever

2010-09-26T00:12:00.000-07:00

Finding good stories about disabled characters, like finding good stories about any minority group in narrative forms dominated by the majority, hard. Finding a good story about a disabled character in a video game would theoretically be even harder, because the interactive nature of games tends to attract people who want to enact fantasies of power, instead of dealing with more hardship than they have in real life. But if there's any one game series that can pull it off without falling into cliches and treating the disabled characters with respect and depth, it's Metal Gear Solid.

Hideo Kojima's popular stealth series has become famous ( infamous )? for savagely deconstructing the pop culture tropes that inspired it. One common theme of video games that is a regular target is the male power fantasy; the protagonist, super-spy/soldier Solid Snake, is NOT meant to be an enviable character. He was literally created via cloning to be the perfect soldier, has spent his entire life at war, and has developed a hardened demeanor that he seems almost inhuman. When this point went over the heads of most of the people who played the first game, the sequel MGS2 replaced Snake with Raiden, a whiny, effete, henpecked, and inexperienced Snake wannabe whose virtual reality training made him ill-suited to real combat. And while the third game was more charitable towards the notion of the power fantasy, its protagonist-- Big Boss, Snake's clone-father-- was established by that point as a villain, and the game played out as a supremely tragic prequel detailing the toll the horrors of war took on him.

Of course, MGS4 tops all three of these deconstructions by bringing back Solid Snake, only this time with a massive handicap.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW

MGS4 takes us on the final mission of Solid Snake, whose body is aging at an accelerated rate with a terminal prognosis. This soon established as degeneration thanks to the cloning method that created him, so we know there will be no miracle cure. But Snake still has to stop his arch-nemesis/clone-brother Liquid Snake from conquering the world, so he jumps into battle despite being physically in his seventies.

It's a common trope to see elderly veterans going out in a blaze of glory with their unbridled badassery. Unfortunately for Snake, this is not how his stubborn determination is perceived. His allies consider him a burden, treating him with polite patronizing at best and outright cruelty at worst. He's clearly in terrible health, and has to repeatedly inject himself with a nanotech syringe that causes tremendous pain, just to keep going. To get around in battle, he wears a high-tech muscle suit, but the suit doesn't give him superhuman endurance-- at best, it allows him to perform adequately. Despite all of this, Snake tries not to act like anything is different. A running joke throughout is Snake's attempt to continue smoking, despite being sent into a coughing fit every time he sticks a cigarette between his lips.

The events described above all occur in the cinematic cutscenes, but the player is not allowed to forget about Snake's handicap even in the playable sections-- some might say especially not in the playable sections. Snake's age is clear from just looking at his face on the game's packaging. He has the face of an old man, and an injury he sustains in the third act leaves half his face horribly scarred in a fashion usually reserved for villains. While Snake's previous design worn a skintight catsuit that showed off his muscles, he's now hiding his withered frame under bulky plastic muscles wrapped in a web of utility belts and pockets containing weaponry. He looks like an old man's head attached to the body Rob Liefeld superhero grotesque. Later you have the option of giving Snake a mask, or even cloaking his face to look like his younger self, but it won't change Snake's weary body language. He still moves slower, takes longer to get up when knocked down, and his stationary animations show fatigue and joint pain. Controlling Old Snake ( as even the screen interface derisively labels him ) requires the player to be very careful, to ensure that his stress levels don't become too high and further throw off his reflexes.

This all flies in the face of typical video game power fantasy logic, where sequels tend to give characters more abilities. The gameplay of MGS4 gives Snake new capabilities, but only in terms of his accessories. That his gadgets and weapons are more sophisticated than ever seems to draw attention to the fact that he needs assistance in his unexpectedly-early final days. It's been observed that even his radar must be separately selected and equipped; previous games had the enemy radar as an automatic function. And if this wasn't enough to establish Snake's infirmity, Raiden from MGS2 returns as a cybernetically-enhanced ninja, who pulls off non-playable feats of badassery and ends up rescuing Snake ( similar to the role Snake played for Raiden ). Note that while Raiden is handicapped, it's in the more conventional sci-fi fashion that ultimately enhances his capabilities; his new metal arms are capable of holding back a moving freighter.

In short, Snake is not aging gracefully, and his characteristic acts of masculine fantasy cause him too much pain for there to be vicarious appeal. But this is a world that will not let Snake be anything besides a soldier. Snake was literally designed to fight, his DNA an attempt to replicate Big Boss and his effectively superhuman combat abilities. His value on the battlefield existed in the fact that he had the physical strength and skill to kill better than anyone else. Once he starts losing those abilities, he becomes a liability instead of a hero. The battlefield demands perfect specimens, and civilians playing soldier via entertainment come in expecting that their avatar fit that ideal. Sequences like the infamous hallway trek in the final act, where a dying Snake has to literally drag himself to his destination across a microwave-laced corridor that is cooking him from the inside, aren't the stories that people expect of their avatars.

And this all would make MGS4 the most depressing video game ever made were it not for the epilogue, which rewards Snake for enduring such hardship. Earlier in the game, we're led to believe that Snake's accelerated aging will not only kill him, but interact with his altered body in the way that turns him into a biological weapon of mass destruction. After defeating Liquid, his final mission seems to be suicide, so he can save millions from himself. But a surprise revelation stops him from pulling the trigger, and while Snake is still dying, he has his final days to himself. No longer a soldier, Snake retires with his tech support partner Otacon and their adopted daughter Sunny. His prize for a life on the battlefield cut short by illness is to leave the world in peace, and with an actual family. An unconventional family that pushes homo-erotic subtext to its limit, but a family nonetheless.

In the end, Snake is not rewarded for his sacrifices by having his strength magically restored, or even by going out with a manly bang. Snake's reward is to see a world where his value is no longer contingent on his strength.

Invincible Iron Man 30; Nice Job Breaking The Space-Time Continuum, Tony

2010-09-12T11:15:00.000-07:00

After a bit of a lag since Stark Disassembled, the Matt Fraction/Salvador Larroca Iron Man book has started to pick up the pace. The latest issue had more plot, as Tony Stark and Sasha Hammer ( Ezekiel Stane's cybernetic girlfriend and part of the mother-daughter team behind the current Hammer Industries ) finally meet, and inevitably come to blows. Before that, they have a surprisingly civil conversation about Tony's new armor, a liquid metal thing powered by his repulsor heart, stored in the hollows of his skeleton, and shaped by his brain. Tony reveals that he got the idea from Iron Lad of the Young Avengers, who came from the future with a similar design. Which led Tony to invent the neuro-kinetic armor technology, which would later be adopted by Iron Lad, who came back in time and inspired Tony to create the neuro-kinetic armor technology, which would later be adopted by Iron Lad...

I appreciate the nod to the Young Avengers ( and Fraction has mentioned in his interviews that the new armor was inspired by both the Iron Lad suit and the movie suit ), but time-travel stories are ridiculous enough as is, and this story had absolutely no need of a continuum-thrashing paradox. Some futurist you are, Tony...

If Jenny McCarthy existed in the Marvel Universe...

2010-09-08T20:23:00.001-07:00

...she'd pin the X-Gene on vaccines, and display the same public, self-aggrandizing bawwfests about how her adorable baby boy was broken. She'd endorse the abolishing of mandatory vaccinations because of the tragedy of having a mutant for a child, while endorsing risky and unpleasant treatments to cure the world of Homo superior. And because the public of the Marvel Universe is even more ignorant and reactionary than that of the real world, they'd believe her.

But then, her son's X-Gene would manifest, and he'd be the most powerful mutant ever. And after realizing that his mother was dangling him in front of the world as the poster child for a group of inherently " flawed " people, he'd sign up with Magneto. The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants would resurge in power, and after the X-Men spent five minutes trying to protect McCarthy, they'd get sick of her and toss her to the Brotherhood. Humanity would fall, and Jenny McCarthy will have been the instigator.

Well, I can dream, can't i? :P

Iron Man Legacy 6: A Great Hidden Chapter of Tony's Lost Weekend

2010-09-01T15:42:00.001-07:00

Today saw the release of Iron Man Legacy #6, by Fred Van Lente ( writer ) and Steve Kurth ( artist ). Though the series takes place throughout Iron Man history, the inaugural arc was set in a fairly generic status quo period ( what seemed to be post-Secretary of Defense, pre-Extremis ), so I wasn't compelled to read it beyond the first issue. But the second arc, " Industrial Revolution ", takes place in a more obscure part of Iron Man history-- Tony Stark's first trip to the West Coast.

Iron Man veterans will remember that after he lost everything in an extended alcoholic binge, Tony sought to rebuild his life on the other side of the country. With the substitute Iron Man Jim Rhodes and the brainy Erwin twins, Tony went to Los Angeles and started a technology firm. At the time, he had just decided to stop drinking and didn't want the pressure of being in the armor, instead helping Rhodey learn and maintain the suit ( much to Rhodey's chagrin ). Those were good stories, with exceptional writing by Denny O'Neil and utterly stunning artwork by Luke McDonnel. Unfortunately, O'Neil was not an Iron Man fan, and as great as his stories were, it was rather clear that he didn't care for Tony Stark ( probably because Tony was a decadent ex-arms dealer, while O'Neil was the guy who had Green Lantern and Green Arrow take a cross-country trip to find the real America ).

Then again, that was over two decades ago. Iron Man has developed as a character by exponential leaps and bounds since those days, and Van Lente takes the more recent history into account. For one, we finally get an explanation why Tony's friends in the superhero community didn't offer him help when he was sleeping on the streets; he would have refused charity even after he sobered up, given his pride. For another, Tony is still carrying an Iron Man armor around, albeit an old one he can't afford to keep in top shape, and that he only snuck past Obadiah Stane because he disguised it as a bag of his father's golf clubs. Finally, Tony's time in LA is noticed by the Pride, the West Coast superhuman crime syndicate that served as the parents/villains in the Runaways comic.

That is quite a bit of retroactive surgery, especially having Tony lug around an armor of his own ( I suppose to keep in line with more recent portrayals of the character, where Tony thinks of the suit not as Iron Man the superheroic dual identity, but THE Iron Man, a tool he uses towards his larger goals ). But it's a really promising start to the arc. While the old stories had Tony take more of a zen humility towards his recovery, Van Lente's version reminds us that this is still very much the cocky bastard we know and love. Tony makes a lot of self-effacing comments as he wanders Wilshire Boulevard, like how Oprah owes him a big confessional scene on her show, or how he now understands Spider-Man's difficulty affording web fluid ( and will reverse engineer a more efficient brand once he regains his wealth ). These definitely have a bitter edge, keeping with Tony's larger character; this is the point where Tony has lost everything due to his own damn fault, basically having given all his resources over to a madman while he was enjoying the luxury of a drunken stupor. ( A nice flashback scene is shown where Obadiah Stane is gloating over the recently deposed Tony, about how he won't last a day without his wealth; another nice continuity nod, since Obadiah was poor as a child, and became a cold-blooded mastermind in order to get an advantage over the world that gave him such a lousy start ).

Tony's best stories are lessons in humility for him, be it the original Stane Saga, Matt Fraction's run, or his neural degeneration under Byrne/Kaminski. I like that Van Lente is revisiting this chapter of Tony's history, and having Tony confront just how far he's fallen when he's hanging out on the street with a paranoid schizophrenic, and realizes that not so long ago, he, too, was a deranged street person. Very few challenging stories have been told with franchise superheroes that don't get retconned away somehow, but Tony's descent into alcoholism is one of them. Even though he regained all his wealth, he still endured the trauma and shame of that class plummet. It's good that we get a reminder of just how far he fell.

Also, I want to give equal commendation to artist Steve Kurth, who did the previous Legacy arc as well as the Ultimate Armor Wars series. Not only is that timeliness impressive in an era where many artists need a break after a single arc, but the art is beautiful. The rendering of the Proto-Classic armor ( the one with the horned mask ) is especially impressive, as well as the awkwardness of Tony having to get around on his armor's roller skates once his boots run out of jet fuel.