Incomplete Completionist

We watched Despicable Me 3 last week - picking up the series after several months hiatus - but I'm glad... I think it's possible that I would never have seen any of this entire series if the first one hadn't been released in 2010 - my summer in Miami - when I saw pretty well every single movie released that summer and before... It's not a great movie series, but it's better than good,,, really quite good

Daredevil was for many years the comic book character who I declared as "my favorite!"  I think it's true, too, but even if not, I've loved the filmic variations of the characters.  I think my favorite characteristic of Daredevil's that I never, perhaps, identified as the reason why I loved him - weirdly - is his religiosity.  

This may sound somewhat counterintuitive as I am a generally irreligious person myself - but I think that's why I gravitated toward him when I was young and still full in the midst of full blown indoctrination... to find a hero who was struggling with his faith - often questioning it, but still allowing himself to be guided by it.  I remember when Daredevil showed up on a made-for-tv-movie of The Incredible Hulk and I just about blew a gasket!

It was almost exactly 10 years ago now that the Daredevil series premiered, and - by my calculations - I finished the first season in about a month*, give or take.  The second season, otoh, I didn't finish until March of 2018 - a full two years after its debut, and in the midst of my trying to catch up on the entirety of the The Extended Marvel Universe Chronology.  

I'm pretty sure I started that second season of Daredevil right away, but faded away, losing interest in the whole The Hand sub-plot (though when I did finally go back to it, the development of a new Elektra portrayal made the season worth it on the whole - if still not great).

Once Charlie Cox started showing up in officially sanctioned MCU stuff I still didn't go back and watch Season 3 until now, with the premier of Daredevil: Born Again coming along now.  Season 3 is GREAT, and I'm on the verge of finishing it.  I am starting to suspect that I may not ever finish TV... (let alone movies!), but to have left 'my favorite' behind for so long I feel like I've missed out.

I've got quite a lot of catching up to do with Marvel Netflix Universe (let alone finishing TV), but glad to be starting down the road with some new Daredevil stories.

* I am not a huge binger, especially with material that I have never seen before.  Even if it's not new, if it's "new to me", I like to parse it out, watching a single episode or maybe two and then moving on to something else for a few days.  (It is for this reason that I almost never watch anything wholly with my wife - she generally leaves me behind in a series - gets all the way through it, and then if I'm watching it again later, she'll dip in for a re-watch)

You have no idea the torment and torture...

 So, I saw Madame Web yesterday with my bro, against my better judgement (but well within my completionist tendencies...), and while it was mostly very much no good as expected, I had the chance to couple it with a new (to me) kaiju film on Max: Invasion of Astro-Monster.

While I'm not a massive connoisseur of kaiju films, I understand the formula (albeit almost as much from Mystery Science Theater 3000 as from seeing them on the their own).  I get that you're not meant, necessarily, to question the structural logic or motivations of characters in kaiju, but when that kaiju half of your Double Feature Challenge is the movie that rings truer, has characters with more realistic emotional lives and motivations, and more intellectually satisfying plotting, then if you are ready to embrace the camp and absurdity of your day of movie-watching, you could, potentially, be in for something of a treat... probably not, but I'll see if I can unpack it here a little bit.

 The post title here is a line from one of the more obscenely, absurdly dumb sequences in all of Madame Web, where our villain, Ceiling Guy is lying in bed (just like Brian Wilson did) with a woman who he just met, and we are meant to believe seduced a scene earlier at the opera by picking up a piece of garbage from the floor and handing it to her, then watching some of the opera.  This woman who is seduced by Ceiling Guy('s I wanna say evident sensitivity or intelligence {or possibly wealth?} because he's at an opera), turns out to be a spy who no one will miss or notice that her password is being used 24/7 by Ceiling Guy's ??Executive Assistant?? to access every camera in the city (in the world?, it's never quite clear), and our Spy Woman's susceptibility to sleeping with 'super' villains moments after meeting them is only the second dumbest thing about this whole sequence.  The worst by far is Ceiling Guy's continued use of the phrase "you have no idea..." or "if you only knew..." or such similar to imply that he has good reason for doing all the dastardly things he's doing, but really only serves to have the viewer say, "right, I don't know... are you ever going to show my or hint at some further reason?..., but no, they aren't going to.

The aliens from Planet X (Xiliens) by comparison have pretty clear (if insanely overcomplicated) motivations...  Upon revealing themselves to the human astronauts, they befriend them by sharing their deepest fear of King Ghidorah (a giant, flying, laser / lightning spitting monster), and then ask for Earth's help by loaning them Godzilla and Rodan (I'm not sure why, exactly, they wouldn't then just be harried by G & R if they succeed in chasing KG off)...

With kaiju, the camp is baked in - to be expected - and even if Madame Web wasn't made meaning to lean in to the camp, I think if you watch it the same way you might watch a kaiju film, there's something here to enjoy.  It's dumb (like, for some reason no one ever goes looking for a stolen taxi and first aid solely consists of chest compressions... just do that forever, and you can save anyone, no matter what has happened to them), but if you just go with it, and assume that they're doing all of this intentionally for comedic affect, I think it might actually be enjoyable.

My advice, if you're taking on this challenge is 1) drinks, lots of drinks; and 2) start with Invasion of Astro-Monster, and then move on to Madame Web, to sorta get you in the mood...

On the Dangers of Nostalgia (and Apocalyptic Thinking)

Last night I attended my annual foray into reminiscing musicality and general old time-i-ness at the Badger Chordhawk's annual Barbershop Show in lovely Janesville, Wisconsin.  This year's theme was "remember the good old days" (which is it's theme every year), but this time, on the radio.  Live Radio - See it with your Ears! was a collection of classic Americana tunes interspersed with schlocky vignettes inspired by early radio programs.

This morning, reading Michael Chabon's Maps & Legends, it occurred to me that this mode of nostalgic thinking is the candy-colored cousin of the dystopian fiction of science fiction films, novels and graphic novels.  Chabon examines Howard Chaykin's American Flagg!, which is set in a post-apocalyptic, corporate-ruled world, where anyone who can afford to has relocated to the suburbs, as it were, on the new Mars colony.

His next chapter (about Cormac McCarthy's The Road) and two chapters after that (about Ben Katchor's Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer) further explicate Chabon's theories of dystopic and nostalgic thinking.  He never says so (and may not realize), but these two modes of thinking are the

Source: ComicsAlliance.com

same.  The nostalgia packed into the Chordhawk's erstwhility is an effort to ignore the present by idealizing the past.  The "good old songs" (some of which are great songs and others that are best forgotten) essentialize and simplify the era they come from just like songs today do.  The function of this nostalgic thinking is to focus attention on the non-existent past rather than the all-too-real present.

So too, post-apocalyptic stories (stories about how the future is so bleak and we are so doomed that we may as well just accept the present as is and distract ourselves while we wait for the inevitable collapse) are arguments for stasis, for inaction.  On the surface, dystopian stories (zombie narratives, say) might be read as warnings of what might come to pass if we do not take some course of action or do take another, but on further examination they are typically peopled with future nostalgialytes, pining for what's been lost.  In these narratives, characters re-enact the pre-apocalyptic traits and activities responsible for the blindness that causes the fall in the first place: empty bourgeois sentimentality (as in Terra Nova), rampant (also empty) consumerism (as in Dawn of the Dead), misplaced loyalty to institutions that lose their meaning once the world changes (as in The Postman or Jericho).

Nostalgia is a mode of remembering as we want to, with little attention paid to actualities.  There's a comfort in the past because it is untouchable.  The now (jetzt-Zeit) is hard, because of its potentiality and the future daunting because of its uncertainty and fluidity.  Then is easy because it can't come back and contradict you.  Apocalyptic thinking also negates the present by forsaking it, giving up on it.  If the future is certain (not necessarily defined, but certainly lost) then the now is drained of its revolutionary potential.  It is jetzt without jetzt-Zeit. 

Bitter Salt

I love summer tent pole movies as much as anyone.  I enjoy it when I'm blown away by one (say, Dark Knight), pleasantly surprised by them (Iron Man), or even when I just get what I expect out of it

*   *   * 

December 2017
Gosh, i do vaguely recall this summer that i spent in Miami while studying at FIU.  I saw a lot of movies.  Salt which i honestly recall not at all except that i think it was a movie that Angelina Jolie was in...

I remember telling my Haitian Creole class the following day during some Q&A exercises that i had gone to see Salt, and everyone thought it was pretty funny, because it was presumed i'd just gone to see Angelina Jolie in the movie... I think i went to see the random action flick because i'd seen pretty much all the movies that summer living alone in West Miami.

Also, i presume Salt was going to be the movie that i got what i expected out of it... If not, this was poised to be a much more complicated post than i originally thought.

this is worth the click...

I generally don't center a blog entry on what i've just found that you, too, must discover, but this, as the title implies, is worth it.

This weeks issue of EW pointed me to Garfield Minus Garfield, a catalog of Garfield comic strips, minus the existence of Garfield. Now, i'm a fan of comics in general (though not Garfield specifically). Sure, i dabbled in fat-cat like everyone did... Holiday specials, bought some of the Garfield treasuries when i was a kid, but it's no Peanuts, not even a Calvin & Hobbes. But, as the site (EW explain), Garfield Minus Garfield gives us an insight into "the empty desperation of modern life" with "Jon Arbuckle in his own version of What About Bob".

See for yourself.

Review of "The Walking Dead"

This review was originally posted (and better so) in Four Color Comics. To see the original version (with an image that simply will not work on my blog for some reason) go here. But, since it fits my theme, and i haven't posted on zombies for a while (except for my wedding post) i submit it here for your amusement & edutainment. But do check out & bookmark jd's wonderful comics blog. I plan to write for it once in a while & it's just a damn good site all round.

The Walking Dead (Vol. #1-4)
Image Comics
Reviewer’s Grade : C-

When my set of all four volumes (thus far) of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead first arrived from amazon.com I was positively giddy… I’d heard nothing but good things (from reviews that evidently were written by his mother) and was thinking I was coming into a world of Romero-level zombie thought in this exciting new series.

BUT, instead, what I found was a cliché-ridden work of zombie survivor fiction that’s been told too many times, and always in the same way. Kirkman does not help his cause in the introduction to Volume 1 when he writes:

“To me, the best zombie movies aren’t the splatter fests of gore and violence with goofy character and tongue in cheek antics. Good zombie movies show us how messed up we are, they make us question our station in society… and our society’s station in the world. They show us gore and violence and all that cool stuff too… but there’s always an undercurrent of social commentary and thoughtfulness.”[1]

Even casual fans of zombie films and literature see such societal critiques at work, but for Kirkman to explicitly make such a blatant statement in the introduction to his first volume bodes ill for the whole run and is a sign of what’s to come. Kirkman suffers from over-writing and an often painful lack of subtlety, a trait shared by artists Tony Moore (Vol 1.) and Charlie Adlard (Vols. 2-4).

The story traces police officer Rick Grimes who awakens from a coma in an empty hospital some days (28 perhaps?) after the zombie necropalypse has hit earth. We follow Grimes as he heads home, discovering his old neighborhood mostly abandoned and slowly discovering the new world order. Through contrived conversations with another survivor and a horse we learn about his wife and child (which we also found out about several panels earlier in the artwork), who he leaves town to try and find.

Kirkman shows disrespect to his readers by having to spell out every notion in words. He seems to not trust his artists, who in turn seem not to trust him (using the most extreme ‘surprised’, ‘angry’, ‘sad’ looks in any frame they want to express emotion).


Some of his frames are so full of words there’s almost no room for characters to walk around in them. When his characters fight, their dialogue feels like an 8-year-old at play: “I’m going to blow your head off” says one survivor to another at one point, presumably before she is about to blow someone’s head off.

With all its negatives, though, the most frustrating thing about The Walking Dead is its amazing potential. The artwork, when it’s not painfully obvious, is quality black and white, which adds to the bleakness of the world the characters inhabit. The covers, all done by Tony Moore are beautiful, if a bit repetitive and the splash pages, few and far between are used very effectively. Walking Dead is at its best when Grimes is wandering alone and there are two or three wordless pages in a row, capturing the voiceless zombie threat more perfectly than any conversation can, but Kirkman again finds a way to spoil many of these with a speech bubble filled only with “…”.

Kirkman is asking very interesting questions about humans living in extreme circumstances, I just wish he could sometimes avoid asking them right out loud.

[1] Kirkman, Robert. The Walking Dead: Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye. Introduction. Berkeley: Image Comics, 2005.

Bad Umbrella Day

So, it's a swirly-winded, rainy day in Chicago. The walk home featured rain from all directions, and impassible puddles strategically placed to ensure soaked socks. All in all, it's a miserable day for walking home. To illustrate this (which i can't), two blocks south of my apartment i discovered the handle of an umbrella, with no actual umbrella attached (i imagine the cover section of an umbrella {a red one, i think} flying whimsimically through the treetops of Hyde Park, never again to deign to descend to earth...) and pictured the poor sot (sop?) holding just the handle as his umbrella top flies away. Sad rain stories all around.

My walk home featured several umbrella inversions, which, as it turns out isn't overly distressing for my newly purchased Walgreens umbrella. Evidently, my umbrella has an advanced technology that allows it to be inverted (converting it into a useful tool for water collection if stranded on a desert island), but easily changed back into an umbrella by closing and reopening it. Most umbrellas i've owned before this one seem to be permanently changed into a 'water collector' because the flimsy aluminum shafts are bent to hell by the wind.

Walking home also gave me an opportunity to show off my amazing leaping ability, from hopping over small puddles, to huge leaps off of curbs, to complex multiple jumps, kicking off of stoops & fences to avoid particularly long puddles. When i jump, i imagine myself floating gracefully over & landing eloquently (think Jackie Chan or Spiderman), but i'm sure the person behind me on the street sees Drunken Penguin or Club-Footed Gorilla... But i do enjoy it.

"...greatly exaggerated"

This moring, Brooke & i went to the Farmer's Market in Omaha's Old Market, and, after finding it painfully understocked & not buying anything we stopped to have a coffee & sat at an outdoor table... As we were sitting there, Kate, a girl i used to work at Metro Community College with, but didn't know very well, walked by. She was smiling and said, "I'm so glad to see you. I thought you had died." This struck me as odd, but i thought it might just be an expression... something like 'it's been so long,' just weirder, but then she went on to explain that she literally thought i was dead, because she'd heard that somebody named Joel who worked at Elkhorn (the Metro campus i worked at) had died, and she thought it had been me, since she didn't know my last name. She said she'd wondered what i'd died of, and how sad that was & was oddly apologetic that she hadn't come to what she thought had been my funeral (she used her baby as an excuse).

She imparted to me that she was very happy i wasn't dead, a point we could agree on & we parted amicably, if awkwardly... See you later

"...but i feel like this."

Whenever i have a cold, i feel like a walking cliché. My nose is shiny & red, my eyes watery... I sneeze constantly. My problem with illness, i think, is that i don't believe in it... My process of "getting sick," which generally happens over the course of two or three days, starts with an odd tickle that i assume is the result of a middling night of drinking or too little sleep and instead of maybe getting a better nights sleep, resting up for a day or getting juiced on vitamin C, i challenge the cold to take me down... I take some Nyquil & drink more, wear fewer sweaters on chilly days and sleep as little as possible. I don't ever really believe i'm getting sick until i'm deep in... And to top it all off, i'm really lousy at actually being sick... Because i'm a whiny little bitch...

Anyway, after a long Friday of academic conferencing (starring Judith Butler & crazy cool Jazz poetry) & moderate drinking followed by a chilly (& rainy) Saturday afternoon of soccer* (followed by another evening of beer & wine at the kids' place {thanks guys--good times}) i am fully under the spell of a miserable malaise. And that sucks. So, i'll sign off groggily & grouchily...

*My 'good goalkeeper' hoax was revealed Saturday, when i let 3 goals by in the first half... Although i kept them scoreless in the second half, my poor performance (which included 1 goal hitting my hands and trickling on past into the goal) cost our team the victory. We tied 3-3 & while a tie isn't a loss, it is a tie.