American Ate My Brain II

[Doodad]

I pondered a while whether I'd post on this thread or not, since I've been involved with the comics business for awhile and I always post under my real name. I've decided I should post, so here goes. I won't cite names of people I know or have talked to.

Great post...very informative. Thanks.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

So Marvel Comics 'Civil War' series about battles between superheroes has a plot device of "over 600 civilians dead?"

Try putting those bold words in a search engine along with "Fallujah."

Do I need to say it? Keyword hijacking.

And I've already written about the 1962 marketing of Spiderman and a
paper by a former member of Parliament that linked Allen Dulles with 'Der Spinnae.'

[IanEye]

Hugh, I would love to hear your thoughts on what Jose had to say here:


http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?p=150280#150280

not being glib, i would really like to hear your take, thanks

[FourthBase]

Hey man, I don't have an answer to it either. It's not rhetorical.

But it is a tough question to answer, isn't it?

No, but really, I genuinely want to know why people will stomach one thing but not the other.
And I genuinely wonder, if held hostage in a dungeon by a sicko like this...



or this...



...and forced to choose -- in real life -- between seeing a child raped vs. seeing that same child murdered and eaten by humans: What would people choose? If it's the latter: What the fuck. And if it's the former, then why can people stomach -- nay, masochistically enjoy watching a simulation of the latter but not the former? It's the little matter of Et's cartoon, isn't it? That simulated cannibalism acted out by a human made up to look like a zombie is okay?

[Jeff]

What i'm wondering is when will the US comic industry start making some comics that are, you know, NOT ABOUT SUPERHEROS!?

Say...!

And no, yet another highbrow postmodern deconstruction of the superhero genre does not count!!

Uh, never mind.


Actually a few come to mind. Sin City particularly. And then there's titles like American Splendor, Love and Rockets and Ghost World. But I suppose those are more '80s/'90s indie successes than they are representative of the comic industry today.

So I guess like I said - never mind.

[Et in Arcadia ego]

...and forced to choose -- in real life -- between seeing a child raped vs. seeing that same child murdered and eaten by humans: What would people choose? If it's the latter: What the fuck. And if it's the former, then why can people stomach -- nay, masochistically enjoy watching a simulation of the latter but not the former? It's the little matter of Et's cartoon, isn't it? That simulated cannibalism acted out by a human made up to look like a zombie is okay?

edit: and please, fourthbase, clarity, friend, clarity. That cartoon isn't depicting cannibalism, its depicting necrophilia.

Huge difference.

[FourthBase]

So is slapping one's forehead the best answer that the Q will get?

[Et in Arcadia ego]

I'll just leave it at this, fourthbase. I'll quote the excellent film, Ravenous.

"If you die first, I'm definitely going to eat you.."





edit:

So is slapping one's forehead the best answer that the Q will get?

I couldn't tell there actually was one in that mess. My bad.

[FourthBase]

Jose wrote more quality stuff in the comments, too:

Ink-Stained Wretch said...
Like they say on the radio, I'm a long-time listener... not exactly a first-time caller, as I've interjected in a few of the conversations in the past, but rarely and never at length.

I've long told many dwellers on the fringe that Jeff Wells is the smartest guy working in the realm of conspiracies -- deep politics -- high weirdness, whatever you want to call it. He draws on information few have noted; he makes connections between disparate materials that others have failed to notice; and he writes with a compelling, fluid style, linking ideas and emotions with a sense of urgent gravity.

Unfortunately, the more I know about a given subject, the more I tend to doubt Jeff's information & conclusions.

As a comics geek, and somebody who's had limited contact with the business end of Marvel, I find some of the data and conclusions in these last two posts to be questionable at best -- to the point where, as I read the front end of this essay, I wondered if Jeff was leading into the notion that the Marvel piece in itself was a satire, a goof on the conspiratorially-minded reading too much in between the lines (or the panels) of the data.

A few points:

- If you're suggesting that scriptwriter Robert Kirkman is perpetrating an intentional satire, I kind of doubt it. I've read quite a bit of his work and he doesn't tend to be somebody who seems particularly interested in bigger themes or in engaging political realities. (There are other comics writers who do dabble in political satire, some of them quite aggressively: Warren Ellis and Brian Wood spring to mind, as does Frank Miller, whose bent for social satire has flowed in an increasingly venomous conservative vein in post-9/11 America.) In contrast, Kirkman rose to prominence penning his self-owned series Invincible, a superhero saga, and The Walking Dead, a zombie epic. In The Walking Dead, Kirkman is clearly mining turf that has provided fertile ground for satire, starting with the subgenre's arguable creator and standard-bearer George Romero. Romero wickedly skewers consumerism in Dawn of the Dead, militarism in Day of the Dead, and goofs on the yawning chasm between the haves and have-nots in Land of the Dead. In stark contrast, "The Walking Dead" comic seems almost wholly uninterested in such larger themes and witty parallels -- it's generally content with on-the-ground soap opera and the surface tensions of survival horror. He may have some thoughts about the human condition, but the zombies don't really seem to function as a metaphor for anything other than the Grim Unexpected Shitstorms tha can fuck up human lives.

- The Marvel Zombies concept was devised, not by Robert Kirkman, who wrote the Marvel Zombies series, but by Mark Millar in a story for Ultimate Fantastic Four. Millar's work is marked by an often wicked bent of humor -- if the DNA of satire in the Marvel Zombies concept comes from anyone, it comes from him. But I have a feeling that the satirical element is more an attack on comic fandom.

"Marvel Zombies" used to be a derisive term for fans who rotely and uncritically bought every Marvel comic each month, regardless of quality. Millar literalized the concept in a story that, on at least one level, pokes fun at the insularity of the comics world. For many years, mainstream superhero comics have simply been redigesting and reinventing concepts originally devised between 40 and 70 years ago. (In this way, it has perhaps been a precursor and a microcosm for an increasingly conservative and unimaginative popular culture -- Pop Will Eat Itself, as a samples-driven one-note joke band from the '80s once put it.)

Ultimate Fantastic Four, where the Marvel Zombies originated, was itself was a "re-imagining" (as the phrase now goes) of Jack Kirby & Stan Lee's original FF stories that started in 1962. Millar generated fan buzz by hinting that the new "Ultimate" universe would be crossing over with the "mainstream" Marvel universe. With sadistic glee, he revealed that the ultimate [sic] destination of his story was yet another universe -- the Marvel Zombies universe. It was a cruel joke sprung on readers primed for a typical "universe spanning" event story. If anything, Millar's concept satirized a genre bereft of new ideas, and a fanbase that would rather see the familiar old concepts chewed up and spit out than dabble in anything new.

If the concept touches on larger themes applicable to America as a whole, I believe it's more or less accidental... just as I believe that Marvel's recent dalliances with US military are the result of almost comical, misguided opportunism on the part of both parties.

Comics have an increasingly graying and often unathletic readership. At my local comics shops, it's rare to see many loyal customers who are much under 30. If the Army thinks they're recruiting anybody with their ads and product placements in the books, they're kidding themselves. I think Marvel is only seizing an opportunity -- milking a clueless sponsor of their lucrative ad dollars before they realize that most comics readers are either too old, too educated, or too unathletic to serve as passable military recruits.

Ink-Stained Wretch said...
Tazmic: I think the reference may be more to America's self-image as a world-saving superhero, not so much the reality.

As William Burroughs says in his sardonic prayer, the video of which inevitably circulates through the intarwub each Thnxgvng Day:

"Thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify -- until the bare lie shines through..."

I think the image of "Capt. America, Zombie" as Jeff's painting it is a troubling metaphor... I just disagree with him that this satirical take is an intentional move on the part of his creators.

Ink-Stained Wretch said...
Shrub: I'd hate to speak for "comics fans as a whole"... I'm probably atypical of the current readership, as I got bored of most of the mainstream superheroics a long time ago. (Judging by the sales charts, the typical readership is pretty conservative... they want to see their old favorites put through their paces in "dramatic" stories that don't really change anything. The most popular titles tend to be ones that perform cosmetic revisions on characters who have been around for decades, luring the readers in with promises of world-shaking changes, but usually shifting the pieces around only to return them to, more or less, the spots where they started.)

And in terms of metaphors about Heroes and Zombies -- I think Jeff is reading more than is intended into a work that's primarily about the insular world of comics. The story of Marvel Zombies is bound by the minutiae of superhero universe continuity, meaningful only to a dwindling readership that at this point can be better characterized as a large club than as a significant movement in popular culture. Much of comicdom has been reduced to navel gazing -- so deep in their own hole, they can only see the lint. But that doesn't mean the primal archetypes of some of these supercharacters don't have life and meaning beyond the blue-event horizon of the local comics shoppe. After all, a given issue of Spider-Man may only sell a hundred-thousand issues at best; but Spider-Man, the character, is known to millions, if not billions through his incarnations in other media.

Why these characters persist -- that's a good question. Arguably, some of the most persistent, perennially popular characters in fiction are ones that embody the greatest fictions that the human race likes to believe about itself. Sherlock Holmes is the embodiment of the triumph of rationalism (and morality) over a universe that at times seems irrational (and immoral). Tarzan reassuringly tells Western man that he's innately destined to rule whatever environment he finds himself in, that he is the natural king of the untamed wilderness -- and the uncivilized savages.

But these readings are simplistic and reductive. Sherlock Holmes is rarely depicted without some reference to his eccentricities, and his flaws. Virtually every work of imagination that persists embraces contradiction; works of simplistic propaganda or didactic communication rarely last beyond the regime that perpetrated them.

In this age, there's something troubling about seeing Capt. America clad in a zombie costume -- on the level that he's an embodiment of the American Dream. In the 1940s, he was a tool of pulp propaganda, hawking war bonds and punching Hitler in the face. In later incarnations, he was often depicted coming into conflict of people who would corrupt and abuse the American dream -- combating superpowered metaphors for Nixonian conspiracies, dueling with a doppelganger who claimed his shield as the property of the American government, and most recently, turning on his old ally Iron Man who had become the avatar for a government crackdown on anonymity (no more secret identities -- at least from the government).

On the comics pages, political realities infected the simplistic good vs. evil mentality of the superheroes a long time ago -- twenty years ago, in Alan Moore's Watchmen, when the superheroes were revealed to be sadists, closet fascists, mental cases, and misguided would-be saviors. That work is soon to be the next major comics adaptation to film... and maybe it will serve as an antidote to the militaristic themes of Iron Man.

Ink-Stained Wretch said...
The startling thing to me is that a mainstream voice like Naomi Wolf is actually using the word fascism for what's going on... and using it in a context that may actually remind the world of what the hell the word means. She's a Friend Of Hillary, yes, but she seems to be genuinely shocked by the idea that It Can Happen Here -- and that, in fact, it almost did. The Prescott Bush / General Smedley Butler saga is pretty common knowledge out here on the fringes of reality... but Naomi Wolf is talking about it? In places where mainstream American liberals might hear about it? Incroyable!

Okay, it's easy to suggest she's somehow a tool in yet another plan. But isn't it possible that she's just publicly and loudly waking up to some truths and realities that maybe all of us here weren't always aware of?

And Tazmic, etc: Okay, there is no Golden Past to turn the clock back to, you know it and I know it... but what future should we be fighting for?

Democracy as a concept, as an ideal, is, to my mind, not such a bad thing. Anyway, it beats all hell out of the Divine Right of Kings. But of course it's an easily manipulated and easily corruptible idea.

I always encounter a lot of cynicism, doubt and fear in these quarters -- rarely any hope. I'm honestly curious as to what people out there think is worth fighting for... or are we all locked int the Black Iron Prison, hopelessly fighting against a latticework of conspiracies who are always nine moves ahead of us?

[FourthBase]

I'll just leave it at this, fourthbase. I'll quote the excellent film, Ravenous.

"If you die first, I'm definitely going to eat you.."

Your cholesterol will skyrocket.

[FourthBase]

There aren't many taboo questions you could ask on this board, though.
I'm kind of proud if I have come up with one.
But I'd rather have it actually answered.

[brekin]

From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_v._ ... d_Stephens

The English yacht Mignonette set sail for Sydney, Australia from Southampton, England on May 19, 1884 with a crew of four. The crew consisted of Tom Dudley, the captain; Edwin Stephens; Edmund Brooks; and Richard Parker, the cabin boy.

On July 5, the yacht sank due to bad weather off the Cape of Good Hope stranding the entire crew of four on a single 13-foot lifeboat. For twenty days they survived on two tins of turnips that the Captain recovered prior to leaving the ship and whatever they could catch.

After eight days without food or water, Dudley proposed that Richard Parker be sacrificed to feed the others. Richard Parker, at this point of time, due to hunger and drinking sea-water, was immobile and possibly unconscious. Brooks did not consent, and no one asked Parker. Dudley proposed that if there were no vessel in sight by the next day, the boy should be killed. On 25 July, with no vessel in sight, Dudley, with the assent of Stephens, said a prayer and slit the boy's throat, killing him.

Despite Brooks' dissent, all of the survivors fed on the body for the next four days until they were picked up by a German boat. The remaining crew were brought to Falmouth where Dudley and Stephens were charged with murder.

Ruling:
Brooks was acquitted of any involvement, but Dudley and Stephens were found guilty and sentenced to death, which was later commuted to six months' imprisonment by Queen Victoria under the Royal Prerogative.

[Attack Ships on Fire]

isn't this essentially the premise of Watchmen when you break it down. not looking forward to the movie adaption i might add...

More or less but there are other post-modern takes on heroes. And I think that the movie adaptation has a shot at pulling it off. At least it looks good so far.

"Only"? Is there not a fucking galactic chasm separating the lowering of superhuman heroes by giving them human frailties...and turning all superhuman heroes into fucking zombie cannibals??? That's not just me being "outdated" or the zombie fad "catching up"...that's fundamentally fucked in the fucking head.

No, it's not. It's make believe. You may not like the subject matter and that is entirely your prerogative but I don't get at why you're proclaiming superheroes as somehow being above being used in stories like "Marvel Zombies", or for that matter, in any stories that echo the senselessness and horror of human existence.

You're acting like it's an unspeakable crime of thought to dream up a make believe story where Captain America and the Marvel superheroes are zombies. Can't the same kind of argument for thought control be used for the unrealistic depiction of positive superheroics? Your moral center may find it ghastly to hand a child a copy of "Marvel Zombies" but why doesn't your brain set off a warning alarm when a kid reads "Incredible Hulk" which shows an unrealistic portrayal of a man given a lethal dose of radiation that impossibly survives to become a monstrous hero of sorts? Do terminally ill kids with cancer that suffer from chemotherapy enjoy "Hulk"? How about Spider-Man getting bit by a radioactive spider and surviving? Or the Fantastic Four getting bombarded with cosmic rays and not dying from cancer? How many unrealistic origins are there for Marvel characters and no one makes a fuss about youngsters messing up their heads thinking that they can get superpowers by exposing themselves to radioactive waste or emissions??

You better believe superheroes can be written of like they are capable of evil acts, or even the less extreme so-called everyday acts like domestic abuse, rape, child molestation, religious persecution, racism, strongarming and every other ill vice that mankind has to offer. Your brain got overloaded by being exposed to the mere existence of "Marvel Zombies"? Then let me give you some reading suggestions that will blow your mind:

Marshal Law - a superhero that hunts and kills other heroes.
Miracleman - Superman in the real world. It's not pretty.
Doom Patrol - the easiest one to swallow in my opinion since its stories are primarily philosophical in nature and not too shocking
Swamp Thing - she has sex with a vegetable that thinks it's a man
Animal Man - blue collar superhero realizes he's in a comic book
Love and Rockets - everyday life isn't pretty
Strangers in Paradise - everyday life is sometimes pretty but can be depressing too
Lost Girls - Dorothy Gale, Wendy Darling and Alice (from Alice in Wonderland) make Helen Gurley Brown from Cosmo blush
Hellblazer - demons from Hell ain't got nothing on how bad one Englishman can be
Enigma - a gay superhero! What is the world coming to!
Sandman - great, dark fantasy material

These are filled with not just shocking imagery (if you think "Marvel Zombies" is a disgrace wait until you see what Kid Miracleman is capable of) but uncomfortable ideas. Do I think that all comic book superheroes need to be dark and realistic and gritty? Of course not, which is why there are half a dozen Spider-Man comic books and they are labeled with age-appropriate ratings. "Marvel Zombies" isn't supposed to be read by a kid that can't handle the maturity that it requires.

These are imaginary beings that can be stretched apart like taffy by our imaginations. Peter Parker can exist as a teenager just discovering his powers and as a married adult simultaneously. There can be Spider-Man comics aimed at little kids, teens and adults. You can have happy sugary sweet stuff and stuff where Spider-Man eats Mary-Jane and laments about it. If it offends you you have every right to complain and let us know of your reaction to it but you are also raging against the machine. There are worse things out there in the world that I would unite my time and energy against fighting than a bunch of spandex zombies eating Galactus.

[Attack Ships on Fire]

ForthBase, please. We're just arging at cross purposes here and if you are really making that dumb, insulting and immoral comparison then I can't even be bothered to talk to you any more.

Excuse me?

I didn't realize that there was any relative moral high ground for "being eaten alive by other humans stripped of their humanity". I thought "the whole point of zombies eating flesh is that it's horrible" and "that's why people enjoy it", so why do people not enjoy watching equally-revolting simulated acts? I thought that was a fair question.

Because the concept of the living dead (the current zombie label, not the old Caribbean concept) remains in the supernatural and thus there is a buffer between the horror of what we know can happen in real life and the horror of the imaginary. Most of this discussion about the horror of a zombie has centered on the cannibalism aspect but there are at least three other facets to the revulsion of a zombie: one, that it can be your former loved one that is now rushing towards you to kill you and it's a kill-or-be-killed decision that you have to make; two, humanity has by and large looked upon the state of death as reflection, of peace, of a time to mourn. You have those aspects ripped away from you when the living dead offer no respite, EVER; and three, we all know what it's like to be hungry every day of our lives...and now you know subconsciously what motivates the zombie but it's for your flesh.

You also have the existential horror of knowing that if someone you love dies they will become a mindless ghoul that will partake in one of the worst sacrileges we can dream up. This isn't like being bitten by a vampire and becoming a vampire because as Jeff rightly points out, you can reason with a vampire. When you're a zombie you are fucking gone: you exist to kill, forever, and it's not personal.

Kirkman's Marvel Zombies are different in that he needed to make them intelligent and vocalize. If it were a comic about superhero zombies like the ones in Romero or Danny Boyle's universes, they would just snarl and try to eat you. Here we get to listen to Spider-Man face the horror of having eaten his loved ones. Doesn't that make the horror even worse?

Getting back to your original point, people experience horror on a recreational basis. That does not make them bad people. Watching or reading zombie stories may be offensive to you but it's still not the same as watching or reading stories about real-life cannibalism, and I would argue that liking the zombie genre does not mean that you have less empathy for your fellow human beings.

[brekin]

The point, for me anyways, is if you agree that culture today is in large part popular hollywood culture, and established "Superheroes" are the somewhat (alright barely) more rational subsitutes for idealized religious and historical figures that represent a moral center. Then when you start to desecrate these admittedly "unrealistic" figures, (how can they be realistic when there appeal is their mythic quality?) you are slowly eroding the moral base of society.

I'm fine with new anti-superheroes and their hip lifestyle that share the same hang ups as we do. But when you take long established icons of good from the popular psyche and make them bad, or vice versa, your playing with fire. How many people have been at a party to hear two serial killer aficionados talking shop? Or ever notice how may gangsta rappas seem to spend their off time in marathon viewing sessions of scarface? Tell me your heroes and I know who you are. Tell me you have none and you've said a whole lot more.

I think this just part of a larger trend that's been going on. Doesn't matter in the end if it's being orchestrated or has a gravity of it's own. Notice the horrible anti-kid remakes of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the new Wizard of Oz coming out? What's next a remake of E.T. where he feeds on the unsuspecting families that house him?