Ruby Nation Chapter 3 Complete!

Finally, the first major arc of Ruby Nation is complete! The story that started with Chapter One exactly last year finished over the weekend, with two extra strips.

It's good to see things on the move; this story has been in the works since October 2011 if you're starting from Chapter One, August 2011 if you're counting the prologue, and AUGUST FRICKIN' 2008 if you count the original, primitive Ruby's World series. And there's still more planned! Much, much more!

As always, feedback is deeply appreciated.

The All-New Iron Man

Couldn't resist...

Dear Something Awful: Autistics can be People, Not Bronies

Recently the humor site Something Awful did an expose on the "brony" phenomenon (i.e. adult men obsessed with My Little Pony, sometimes to the point of fetishization). The article consisted entirely of insulting the Bronies for being pervy and pathetic, and most of those insults were various permutations of Autism and Asperger's. To quote author Seth Bailey;

"As you may have noticed, I've made a lot of autism/aspergers jokes in this update. The reason for this is twofold: 1) The Autism Spectrum is a bottomless lulzmine of comedy gold that never goes dry no matter how many mother loads are discovered by the internet hate machine and 2) a disproportionate number of bronies identify (either self-diagnosed or for realsies) as autistic/aspergarian. The sperg is practically rampant in this subculture."

Take this "documentary" for example. While it was uploaded to troll bronies, these are real, honest to God members of the culture in the video. I had the misfortune of watching the entire goddamn thing and there is not a single normal person to be had; not one. I'm not sure which came first: the children's show that hit so many spergbuttons that it would inevitably become obsessed over by neckbearded futurepedos or the broken-ass brain that was looking for a children's show to latch on to. Science would suggest a co-evolution.

The basic notion expressed here is that autism has a direct correlation with not just liking My Little Pony, but devoting your life to a sexual arousal of prepubescent cartoon horses. The fact that it's expressed as humor is besides the point. This is hardly the first time Something Awful has used autistic people as a target, based on the actions of a few. And it's developed an influence to the point where simply admitting having autism on the internet carries a risk of being trolled. And reacting to that trolling makes you look over-sensitive, as though wanting to not be judged by your neurological make-up (or "broken-ass brain") makes you a member of the "PC Police".

I stopped writing my reviews of Sonichu because I felt they were doing more harm than good; I intended to make sure I was just making fun of Christian Weston Chandler for being an awful writer/artist and a personally disturbed and unpleasant individual, but I doubt it came across that way to everyone who read it. Chandler (who's also a brony) is a laughable failure of a human being, but he's that way from his own experiences, his own poor upbringing and his own bad choices. The same is true for the bronies being ridiculed there; autism is only one part of an autistic's entire persona, and while it may guide the direction in which they go, it's not an immutable lock upon who they'll be and what they'll do. There are certainly "neuro-typical" bronies engaged in these perversions, and there are certainly plenty of autistic people who have meaningful jobs, relationships, and lives outside of their fandoms. (I personally could care less about My Little Pony either way).

I doubt that a Something Awful writer would explicitly  make a joke about howall Christians were homophobic bigots, that all African-Americans were materialistic gangsters, that all homosexuals were gaudy perverts, or any other sweeping generalization about a large group of people. I don't mind the making fun of the more extreme bronies, though the unpleasant traits they express have more to do with their own personal sexual dysfunctions than simply liking My Little Pony . What I mind is the notion that because of the way I was born, I'm somehow less than human, and cannot escape association with the internet's sub-cultural laughing stocks.

The Fall of Hank Pym, The Avengers' Greatest Failure

It's occurred to be before that the controversy around the character of Hank Pym (a.k.a. Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Goliath/Yellowjacket/Wasp) has a mental illness component that's rarely addressed. The character has polarized Marvel readers since that 1981 issue where he struck his then-wife Janet Van Dyne (a.k.a. the Wasp)*. That issue, and the larger storyline to which it's connected, has been out of print for years, so the actual context of the event has been largely divorced from that one panel of Hank hitting Jan. But since the whole story has finally been reprinted in the Avengers: Trial of Yellowjacket trade paperback release (which I strongly recommend), there's finally the opportunity to examine Hank's deeds with closer scrutiny.

On the one hand, Hank does behave badly, and he's not so far gone that he loses responsibility for his actions. Having just re-joined the Avengers after an unsuccessful return to his scientific work (during which Jan tayed on the team), Hank's an unstable nervous wreck, and he takes his frustrations out on Jan. Jan, trying to be the good wife, tries gently reasoning with him, even though he's snapping at her over every perceived slight. What's important to note is that while the physical abuse of Jan is often brought up, the verbal and psychological abuse is downplayed, but that played just as much of a role in their divorce. At one point, when Jan's trying to decide which of her Wasp costumes she should wear to the Avengers meeting, Hank uses his Yellowjacket suit to blast one out of her hand. He's using a deadly weapon to destroy her property, and thus issuing an implicit threat. Jan doesn't say anything in response, still under the impression that she can help him (and thus continuing to enable his use of her as a scapegoat, as is so often and sadly the case).

Hank's behavior is reprehensible, and it goes beyond a domestic dispute and into nearly manslaughtering the entire Avengers. He creates a robot to attack the Avengers so he can shut it down and appear to have saved the day, but like all robots in these stories (most notably, Hank's accidental creation of Avengers arch-nemesis Ultron), it goes berserk, everyone sees through Hank's ruse, and Jan ends up shutting it down. It would be kind of hard for him to plead insanity when he had enough rational ability to make a giant killer robot, even if it ultimately couldn't be controlled. Looking closely at Hank's behavior, he's aware that he's doing the wrong things, but he ends up doing them anyway because he can't control his impulses and is so desperate to prove his worth. He doesn't try to win back the Avengers or his wife after these events, realizing the immensity what he's done; he doesn't even accept any charity, despite the fact that he was living off of Jan's trust fund and is otherwise penniless.

So yes, Hank is responsible for his sins. But while he could have controlled himself even in the context of his nervous breakdown, the event did not occur in a vacuum. Hank had previously been unstable, due to his own low self-esteem, his unhealthy relationship with Jan (a younger woman who he had nothing in common with, other than her resemblance to his dead first wife), his guilt over the creation of Ultron**, and the adverse psychological side-effects of his powers. And during this whole time, the Avengers were right there, watching but doing virtually nothing. Nobody on the team asked Hank what was bothering him. Nobody suggested therapy for him or Jan, together or separately. Nobody was worrying about his long-term mental stability, even when he fell into delusions where he thought he was another, more aggressive man. His marriage to Jan occurred when he was high on Science Chemical Fumes and called himself Yellowjacket, believing himself the murderer of the original Hank Pym. The great fraternity of superheroes was nothing more than a Greek Chorus bearing passive witness to the downward spiral of one of their founding members, up until his baggage became a physical threat.***

It's worth noting that this story happened right before the similar downward spiral of another Avengers founder; Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man. At this point, most of the Avengers didn't know Tony's secret identity, and when he ended up dating Jan shortly after her divorce, she wasn't aware that she was dating one of her (and Hank's) co-workers. Tony fell for her and couldn't bring himself to tell her the truth, at least until Captain America guilt-tripped him into doing so. The result was a messy break-up that fuelled Tony's own depression, until he outright disappeared from the Avengers. This was due to the story in his own book, where the psychological warfare of Obadiah Stane caused him to sink into an alcoholic relapse. Tony's storyline was controlled by the Iron Man creative team, but you could see Tony fraying at the edges bit by bit in the Avengers, withdrawing from interacting with the team (and his ex), with nobody doing much to check in with him.

The Avengers have an absolutely abysmal track record taking care of their own. Hank is only one of the heroes to have a catastrophic nervous breakdown while on the team; the list of fallen heroes on the Avengers roster include the aforementioned Tony, Wanda Maximoff, Pietro Maximoff, Simon Williams, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner, Carol Danvers, and more. But as far as he fell, Hank managed to pick himself up. He earned Jan's forgiveness (and even a few reconciliations, however temporary), he earned his place back in the Avengers, and everything he's done since has been an act of atonement. He's not entirely stable, but nobody is immune to stress, especially not as a superhero.

Can't he get fandom's forgiveness?

*(It's worth noting that the writer of the original story, Jim Shooter, wrote the scene as Hank pushing her away with more force than intended, but the artist drew it like just another superhero fight scene; hence, an isolated incident became a scarlet letter.)
**(Who's actually killed millions of people. How come Hank gets more grief for one slap than for creating a genocidal anti-organic monster? )
***(Joe Casey's excellent Earth's Mightiest Heroes mini-series portrayed the wedding in a much darker light, where Jan and everyone else was playing along with Hank's delusion to avoid an even greater meltdown. Not sure if this makes the Avengers look better, or much, much worse.)

The Neil Kapit Update for August: I'm Gonna Draw the Crap Out of your Cat

I haven't updated this blog in too long, and honestly it's because I don't know what to do with it. It seems like I can draw some interest when I bitch about comics (particularly when I examine the disability aspects), but it's not exactly what I want to do. I guess I want to avoid the old cliche of the critic who takes out his own unfulfilled ambitions upon more successful writers.

But I'm still at work, particularly on creative projects. And for my Poet Kitties comic, I have a lucrative offer for you all. If you want your cat to appear, just follow the link and send me pictures of your cat, and a quote if you want. No charge necessary!

The Goldfish's 10 Things Fiction Writers Need To Remember About Disability: The Spider-Man Movie People Should've Read This

One of the greatest essays I've read in the past few weeks online the Goldfish's 10 Things Fiction Writers Need to Remember About Disability. It's been broken up into Part One and Part Two, and both are well worth considering for any writer.

It's especially relevant to me because I read the first part the same week I saw the new Spider-Man movie, and while I liked that movie a lot, many of these things were ignored in regards to the film's antagonist. Of all the characters they could've picked, they chose Dr. Curt Connors, a.k.a. the Lizard. This character, who thought his amputated arm was such a disgrace that he would risk his own life to cure it (and, in doing so, turn himself into a giant reptile monster), represents several things on the Goldfish's list;

3. People with long-term impairments or chronic illness are not fascinated by their own condition or their own symptoms. While Connors doesn't natter on about statistics regarding amputated or malformed limbs, he is obsessed with curing his ailment, right down to his "World Without Weakness" rhetoric. Whatever sympathy he would've gotten for his handicap and his daily accessibility issues is lost when he starts using Eugenic language, and "weakness" is a term with further reaching connotations. Note that Connors is not dying, nor is his life completely ruined due to the lack of his arm. It's understandable that he would be frustrate with his limitation and admirable that he'd go into medical science, but using himself as a test subject shows a deeply internalized self-hating ableism. (And I get that he was feeling awful at the time, looking at being fired or even disappeared by Norman Osborn, but he'd been spouting the World Without Weakness rhetoric since his first scene.)


4. Disabled people are not all young, white, straight, affluent men. Connors is an older gentleman, so he at least beats the ageist part of that majority formula, but he's male, white, (presumably) straight, and lives comfortably. Then again, the Amazing Spider-Man movie only has a few female characters (albeit in important roles; Gwen Stacy is used superbly here as Peter's confidante as well as his girlfriend, and Emma Stone does a great job with the character. Aunt May is also used effectively, albeit with less screen time). It also has only one remotely significant character of color, that being Norman's henchman. And there are no gay, bi, or transgendered/intersexed characters. Not a surprise, and I can't hold it against this movie specifically, but it does illustrate the problem; young, white, straight, affluent, and abled men still control all the most visible narratives. 


Again, I liked Amazing Spider-Man a lot as a movie, and it's definitely in my top 5 of superhero films. But it's still a reminder that big budgets and blockbuster sales are rarely given to stories outside that very limited Hollywood narrative.


5. Disabled people go bad for a reason. There is a reason, but it's not a good one; surely Connors would've known that jamming himself full of reptile DNA wouldn't go well, either killing himself (a true act of weakness, regardless of physical or intellectual challenge) or turning himself into a monster. Since it's the latter, Connors is responsible for everyone the Lizard killed, in the same way that a drunk driver is accountable for the people they run over. Worse yet, even after Connors reverts back after his initial transformation, he's clearly gone evil by this point, addicted to the power of being the Lizard and chewing every inch of scenery.


6. There aren't many reasons for disabled people not to have sex. In the comics, Connors is (or was) married with a kid, so this was averted. Here, he seems to live alone and doesn't show any evidence of a romantic life. He's portrayed as completely sexless, though at least without a family, Connors doesn't betray those responsibilities. (And that might make the comic version worse, because in one of his most recent transformations, Connors ATE his son. Surely he'd rather have had a living son than a regrown arm, had he known what the Lizard serum would do?)


9. Disabled people know other disabled people. Connors is the only disabled character in the movie. Then again, if he'd talked to disabled people about his "World Without Weakness" nonsense, they might've been offended. I wish someone had asked him which is worse; not having an arm, or living in a world that makes you feel like a pariah without two arms? (this was done very well in X-Men First Class, when Mystique told off Xavier for trying to fit in with a bigoted world. By coincidence, that movie also had a major character try to cure his disability with science and fail miserably, with Hank McCoy's faulty mutant cure. That was even more foolish on Hank's part, because he wasn't physically limited beyond being forced to hide his simian feet, which was society's fault and not his own. Though he got off easier, because while the cure made him blue-furred, he did keep his mind, unlike Connors).


10. Disability is not a conflict that has to be resolved. Perhaps this is subverted because Connors is punished for trying to resolve that conflict, being sent to prison and not even keeping his regrown arm once he reverts to his human form. But the audience is supposed to sympathize with Connors for being an apparent "cripple", and for trying to cure his condition. And ideally, that sympathy would vanish once he acted on the feeling that he'd rather be dead or a monster than alive with one less arm than most. 


Again, thanks to The Goldfish for these great discussions!

Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots Novel Review: A Labor of La Li Lu Le Love

As anyone who's known me in the past two years can attest, I love Metal Gear. It's been the subject of my literal autistic obsession ever since I played the original PS1 game as a digital download. Since then, I've played through every game, beat all of the games in the Solid series multiple times, collected the various merchandise (including those beautiful but expensive Play Arts figures), and worked references into several aspects of my life (including my comics). Metal Gear has all the things I look for in a story; complex and sympathetic characters, a sophisticated (if often arcane and absurd) narrative, an ability to switch between wacky humor and tear-jerking drama, and a complex metatextual understanding of its own nature as a story. The best of the series, IMO, was Metal Gear Solid 4, the canonical ending of hero Solid Snake's story as he pulls his his dying, prematurely aged body together for one big final mission.

When I heard there was a novelization of MGS4, I was initially blasé about it; novelizations are usually mediocre to poor, as cheap cash-ins haphazardly trying to shoehorn a story into a different medium. The more appropriate piece of evidence for this case is Raymond Benson's novelization of the PS1 game, which treated the story as though it were a straightforward, cheesy James Bond epic, even giving Snake several lame one-liners (such as saying "Merry Christmas" to an enemy Genome Soldier, then choking him to death and saying "Christmas came early this year!"), which didn't fit at all with his usual warrior-poet personality. But this novelization has a much greater pedigree; it was written by the late Project Itoh (real name Satoshi Ito), a Japanese novelist and a personal friend of Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima. Itoh was diagnosed with cancer in 2001, and fought a long, hard battle that tragically ended with his death in 2009. Kojima even writes the afterward of this novel, praising Itoh's work here and on his original stories (many of which were originally fan fiction of Kojima games like Snatcher), and saying that his "genes" are now infused into the Metal Gear mythology. Given how the series is all about genes and memes passing from generation to generation, this is lofty and touching praise.

But how is the novel itself? First of all, I should say that if you're a Metal Gear fan who's played MGS4, you absolutely have to read this book. The narrator is Hal "Otacon" Emmerich, who recounts the final days of his hetero life-mate's life (as he promised at the end of the game, bearing witness to everything the legendary hero was). This is a unique and more somber account of the events, leaving out the action scenes that wouldn't have contributed to the plot (such as the Beauty and the Beast Corps battles, grotesque parodies of Kojima's own wacky mini-bosses), and adding some background detail that fills in the gaps and revises the sillier elements of the story. For example, there's a section on the villainous Liquid Snake's history, which removes all the "recessive/dominant gene" nonsense of his backstory and instead tells about how he spent many of his formative years as a POW during the Gulf War, being degraded and tortured and left out to dry by his own government, while his twin-brother Solid Snake became the glorious hero of Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land. There's also some interesting sci-fi explanations of elements that might have confused you, such as all the bar codes on Raiden's cyborg exoskeleton, or the full extent of Snake's illness. It may not have occurred to gamers that flying from Morroco to Peru to Czechlosovakia to Alaska to a floating ocean fortress was very hard on Snake's lungs, given all the wild differences in atmospheric pressure.

And if you haven't played any of the Metal Gear games? To be honest, that's a bit of a harder sell. MGS4 was a game with an extremely complex plot that invoked story threads from throughout Metal Gear history. The game worked because there were playable segments that didn't need such complex understanding, as well as an easily understandable and sympathetic main story of Old Snake's final mission. Here, a lot of it is left to exposition, including details that tell what characters feel instead of showing. It was written to be accessible to a wider audience, but in the end there's a bit too much hand-holding with the dialogue, especially when it comes to Solid Snake's motivations. Then again, that may be justified by the fact that this is written from Otacon's perspective, and it seems within his character to mix long technical pieces with blubbering histrionics. Especially when it comes to Snake, since Otacon lived and worked closely with the man for nine years, and saw more of Snake's tender core, rather than his tough super-soldier exterior.

But though the writing can be overwrought, I'd still recommend this as a piece of science fiction. For all its warts, including a convoluted narrative, a generous amount of Narm, and a villain who is possessed by the transplanted right hand of another villain, MGS4 is still a heartfelt story with a beautiful message. By this point, the series had evolved from being an anti-war narrative to an anti-digital-control-narrative to an ANTI-NARRATIVE NARRATIVE. The dystopian future of MGS4, where mercenary companies have dominated the world, war exists as the impetus for the global economy (how very far-fetched, he says with a roll of the eyes), and almost everyone has their senses monitored and influenced by nano machines, is the grim result of a power struggle between men trying to enforce their own ideal narratives upon the world. The utopian obsessions, spawned by different misinterpretations of a heroic idol, have led to a struggle of liberty vs. security with a result that satisfies neither. And Solid Snake, an artificially created man manipulated by both sides, has to put things right, motivated by no ideology but the desire to keep the world afloat so future generations can make their own decisions. The kanji character on Snake's uniform/powered armor in MGS4 stands for "To Let The World Be"*, and while this may at first sound like cowardice, it's actually a strong endorsement of volunteerism. If people do not make their decisions of their own free will, as opposed to subscribing to a systemic master narrative (be it religion, nationality, or the idolatry of a hero like the Boss from Metal Gear Solid 3), then there can be no progress.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to check out some of Project Itoh's original works, right after removing the tears from my eyes after experiencing the Microwave Hallway scene AGAIN.

* You can even use this for a disability rights reading, since it endorses acceptance of differences and individual perspectives over master narratives, including ableist ones like enforcing that people try to be "fixed".