So I watched this debate last night and I just have a couple of things to comment on it (my comments will be clear if you watch the video first, so you should do that. It’s just 5 hours):
-When the ”it’s not a genocide” side says that international law doesn’t matter, they of course mean that it doesn’t matter to Israel, because it doesn’t matter to the US, because they’re both already criminals and until they can be held accountable they will continue to be. By which it logically follows that if Hamas had only claimed on Oct 7th that the IDF was hiding behind civilians, they could have murdered at least 35 times as many civilians and it would have counted as self defense.
-You can’t be a super efficient and exact army and murder that many civilians, especially that many children, and not be genocidal. So if you’re not intentionally genocidal, you have to admit that you’re fucking up real bad, and you need to cease fire to find another solution to your problem. It was ”funny” when Morris used the word ”proportionality”, because it’s a lot of bodies since Israel had any credibility in saying that their response is proportional. Of course, that’d require that you care about civilian deaths, which you obviously don’t, which takes us back to an intentional genocide being the most probable answer. And if it’s a genocide, it needs to stop immediately, because it’s a genocide and you’re not supposed to do those.
-And yes, Finkelstein was a bit harsh on Destiny, but he was also right: that moron shouldn’t have been there yapping his motomouth while the grown-ups were talking. And I generally don’t have anything against people being harsh on genocide apologists…
By the way, I do appreciate that they let this discussion take the time it did instead of forcing it into a shorter format. It could have been even longer to make room for decades of checkpoints, incarcerations, demolished homes, stolen homes and other abuses to give more context, but still… It’s a pretty good, if frustrating, debate.
The City is firing sentient smart-missiles against terrorists hiding in the previously unknown desert. But who is this outer enemy?
Using metamagic, Purple learns how to fly and takes Information and Erica on an expedition to find out, but the truth comes with unexpected dangers.
At 236 pages, this is my thickest book yet (not counting the massive collections) and, if I dare say so myself, the best one so far!
I will also have it for sale at a noise event in Jönköping, April 26: The Old World Is Dying. As you can see, not only will the music be great but it will also be the first official appearance by Dice Dominion! And if you didn’t know, TRAUMA COMMAND is Susanne Johansson who made most of the Piracy covers, including the new one. FACTORY FARMING also contributed to the soundtrack for After the Ends of the World 2 (and a bunch of Wormgod events, sometimes under different names). This is not to be missed!
Coming from print at the same time is also the new CBA vol 62|63: Liminal Space, where I also have a comic. It’s actually the first chapter from Piracy 013, but a slightly different version. It’s rewritten to work as a stand-alone story, but I’ve also handled post-production of the images differently…
Ok, so, Octavia E Butler… Lately I’ve been reading her Patternist series, and now I’m reading Kindred and it’s touching me in ways I wasn’t prepared for. The other night when I went to bed, I couldn’t sleep because of anxiety over what was going to happen with one of the characters (I won’t spoil anything, but I had stopped reading at page 185 of the 2023 Headline edition, for anyone who knows). And now I just came out of a 2 hour bath because I couldn’t figure out how to stop reading it to get out of the tub. I have 20 pages left, and fuck Disney+ completely if their adaptation isn’t a good one!
The above was written a few days ago. I’ve since finished the book and seen [enough of] the TV version and here’s what I think:
They’ve made some weird choices.
Right from the start, with the choice of the opening scene, it feels like they were going to set this up as a long-running series instead of the finished story it should have been. That feeling seems to have been correct, considering the first season is an unfinished story of 8 episodes, which would have continued if it hadn’t been cancelled.
I’m trying not to spoil anything of the book (I don’t care as much about the TV series), so I won’t go into details, but…
Hang on. My comments on the TV series are kind of meant for people who read the book and are trying to decide if they should try the TV version, but let me be a bit user-friendly and start by introducing the story a little bit.
It’s a time-travel story. 26-year-old Dana goes back in time to save the life of Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner. It gets complicated since Dana is black and Rufus’ family owns slaves and black people need paperwork to prove they’re not slaves. Dana’s husband is a bit older and white and also goes back with her some of the time. I’m not even sure I’m going to say much more about the story itself, you should just read it, but as you can imagine it deals with a lot of complications. It has a clear perspective on power-relations while at the same time blaming the times rather than necessarily the people who live in them. By which I mean that all the characters in the book are believable and have motivations that can be understood (if not sympathized with), even when they act monstrously. The book also does something that feels far too unique, which is treating everyone, from slaves to slave-holders, as people. It feels like most of the time when this period of US history is depicted, black people are portrayed as victims only, with little to no agency. Or their agency is almost exclusively defined in relation to white people (actually, don’t quote me on this. I haven’t done any thorough research with statistics or anything. It’s more of a feeling I got when reading Kindred, that this was something that’s often been missed). And, as I mentioned in the beginning, Butler has a way with storytelling that I have a hard time defining with any word other than captivating.
So with that said, here are some more thoughts on the TV series:
Some of the choices I can kind of see how they could have made them work. Like having Dana be an aspiring TV writer rather than a novelist. Having her want to write things like he favorite show Dynasty feels a bit infantilizing, however. It could have made sense for an adaptation. If done right. But no.
Some were just bad choices, probably meant to make things more exciting but instead rendering some important points in the book impossible to transfer to the screen. For example, Kevin isn’t her husband and fellow novelist, but some musician guy she just started dating, by which I mean that their first date ends with both of them visiting Maryland of 1815. And there are some discussions they have in the book about their experiences, which really need to be between two people who have a long-standing relationship, not two persons who just met and hardly know each other. But I guess it’s supposed to be more exciting if they can get to know each other under these extreme circumstances? Or maybe it’d be too controversial to have an interracial married couple in a 2022 TV series (but not a 1979 book)?
They’ve preserved some scenes from the book, but put them in a weird order in a way that takes away what could have been both subtle and/or powerful scenes. Instead we get watered-down versions.
I read a review that said the TV series delt gratuitous in its depictions of the brutality of slavery, with increasing degrees of torture in the episodes I haven’t seen. This also feels wrong to me, because the book managed to get the wrongness of slavery across even without a constant barrage of black people being whipped. That part of it makes it much worse, of course, but it’s also important to remember that even the more benign slaveholders were part of a system that absolutely needed to be abolished.
In general, it kind of felt a bit dumbed-down, which is always a bad sign. I saw the first two episodes (almost). Then I jumped to the 8th to see if it seemed to get better. It didn’t. It’s just as well that it got cancelled, especially if it means someone else can have a proper go at making an adaptation.
Having written a version of the above as a comment on facebook, the app decided to die on me and it blinked what I’d written out of existence. I’m going to end this review of the TV series with the same thing I decided to write in my comment instead:
Stay away from it, it failed.
But also: read the book, for fuck’s sake!
So, the question some of us are thinking about these days: Will AI replace human artists?
I think most people who make comics and other kinds of art don’t do it with getting rich as the motivation. We don’t even do it to get paid. Don’t get me wrong here: Getting paid for it is a way to be able to do it, it’s a way to make a living doing something you like, to have the time to do it. So it’s important in that way, it’s just not the main motivation. So even IF AI was used instead of human artists/illustrators/cartoonists, humans would still be making art. I know, because I’m doing it and I seldom get paid for the actual art (I get mostly indirect money like grants or by doing art-related projects etc, what I get from the actual comics/illustrations is often a pretty small part of my income).
And I believe that as long as people are making art, there will be an audience for it, because even if the AI can make beautiful images, there is more that goes into art, like individual artists’ experiences, thought processes, emotions, skills, personality. Even if an AI would become sentient and have all that, it’d be one among many. And as long as it doesn’t, it’s a tool to be used in the process of making art.
I just read a comic (Summer Island) written by Steve Coulson, a human, with art ”by” Midjourney, an AI. But the AI didn’t make the comic. The human fed it lines of text and (probably) got a huge number of results to choose from. So there are possibly hundreds of unused images that weren’t selected because they didn’t fit what the human wanted them to express. So it’s not really the artist, just like a pen isn’t a creator, or a brush or even Photoshop.
Sure, some potential employers would rather use an AI than pay someone to make illustrations, but they still need someone to wield it. And they probably would’ve paid as little as possible to a human artist anyway, or do the old ”you’re doing something you love so you don’t need money and besides, you get exposure isn’t that great”. This may sound hypocritical since I’m also working with a publisher that mostly hasn’t been able to pay for comics, but we do when we can, and no one is making money off anyone else’s work. Because it’s all non-profit (and pretty non-commercial), and the editors mostly don’t get paid either, and the artists know what they’re getting into and so on and so on and these days we’re actually paying at least a little.
Making it big in art is about knowing the right people, existing in the right social circles, being the right kind of social chameleon, being either born into the right family or being lucky. I don’t have that, so to me there’s no difference between an AI- or human-generated image being sold for $433K because in both cases it’s someone else making that money. Maybe that’s why I’m not worried about being replaced, because what are they going to take from me, my non-profit work? I’d be happy to be able to focus on my own comics instead. Just like most economic crises haven’t really affected me since I didn’t have a lot of money before or after the crises either…
People still listen to guitar music even though electronica exists. The problems with the music indistry are, as they have always been, not that people don’t listen to music or that no one makes music, but that music companies want to make a profit. Record companies always got more than the actual musicians, just as it is now with Spotify.
The problem, as always, is Capitalism, not the tools we use to make art.
The images in this post were made using Craiyon. Not to complain, but very few of these images are even close to what I would have done…
Been a while. I’ve mostly spent this summer working on Outer Enemy, the new Piracy is Liberation book. And playing Cyberpunk 2077 and Horizon Forbidden West.
So I thought I’d show a little something from the comic I made for CBA vol 56|57.
It’s called OUTSIDE and is an uncomic made from one normal comic (a chapter from Piracy is Liberation 005) and three paintings (H8 from Alkom’X #8, the tape cover for the Noise Against Fascism/Legion of Swine split and Her Fiery Eyes from After the Ends of the World), piled on top of each other and cut up to create a non-narrative structure, something that can’t be read other than through vague feelings and instinct.
My first though when Allan Haverhom announced his theme (UNCOMICS) as guest editor for this issue of CBA was something like: “I should make something for this, how hard can it be?”
It turned out to be about as hard as I thought it would be, except the first idea I had didn’t work at all. That one was more of a deconstruction, literally, with the elements of a comic (panels, bubbles, texts, drawings, gutters etc) falling apart and off the page as the comics progressed, with an attempt at making some kind of point in the end.
Then I realized that I should view this project as visual noise rather than anything else. And when I listen to noise, I’m not very intellectual about it, and the noise I’m listening to is also generally made by musicians who go more by feeling than intellectual theory when they put together their music. Or at least that’s how it comes across, I’m far from an expert. The best noise to me is harsh noise walls that go for your intestines rather than your brain.
So I tried using that kind of approach instead. I took the chapter Outside from Piracy 005, put all the pages in top of each other for the first page, then added and subtracted more elements as it progressed through its 10 pages until I had a visual flow I felt was right.
Maybe I should note that basically none of what I’ve just said was done consciously at the time. But hey, after-the-fact constructions are also constructions.
Allan has a text going throughout the issue about how comics is (or could be) a visual medium rather than a narrative one. I’m not sure I agree with his points, because to me it has always been mostly about the narrative and the visuals are definitely a part of the narration and it doesn’t make sense to separate them. But it was an interesting theme to work with and see what I could do with it.
If you think the uncomics concept is interesting and want to explore it further, check out Allan’s site: uncomics.org
So what you’ve seen in this post are two pages from the comic (pg 2-3).
And here are some noise (and some non-noise) tips from my tape collection (I was going to link to some video or something but I’ve only slept 3,5 hours so fuck it, I’m doing it this way instead):
Just found out that comics creator Nina von Rüdiger passed away.
We hadn’t had much contact now for years, but there were a few years, about fifteen years ago, when we talked a lot. Later she started using her real name, but back then she went by rama as her artist name.
We had lots of exchange about Japanese movies, manga/anime and kung fu movies, but also about our own respective comics.
I got to read a (still unpublished, I believe) translation of her first book, Vesi Oli Mustaa, which later evolved into her and Johanna Koljonen‘s Oblivion High.
She helped me formulate some stuff about Swedish self-rightousness that was quite fundamental for when I was taking my comic Arg Kanin (Angry Animals) to the next level. It’s what I think of to get back on track whenever I lack focus on an Arg Kanin strip.
Her comment that it’s never too late to start learning kung fu has also been a good comfort, though I still haven’t started and probably won’t.
She also made a piece for the gallery section (and almost drew a chapter, if there had been time) for Piracy is Liberation 007: Spiders pt 1.
We only met once or twice irl, and most of our conversations were in the chat function of social media I don’t think even exists anymore. It somehow feels like it should seem a bit shallow to think of a person in terms of what movies and comics we talked about, but that’s what we had and it’s something that stays with me, not only in terms of her influence on my own works. And there are still some movies I can’t think about without connecting them to conversations I had with her, or because she was the one suggesting I should watch them. Right now, I especially think of Yojiro Takita‘s Okuribito (Departures). Probably the best film I’ve seen about saying goodbye.
Films. TV. Mostly short reviews. I listed only the ones I saw that were either good (4/5), really good (5/5) or really bad (1/5). Skipped the bad ones (2/5) and the meh ones (3/5) and the ones I just didn’t have anything to say about. I won’t write about if I liked them, so you can assume I did unless I actually say I didn’t. I’m not going into details on most films. In same cases, what I write won’t make much sense until after you’ve seen what I’m talking about…
Don’t Look Up and Platform. Two of the best documentary about current day life from the last few years. Also similar: Denis Villeneuve‘s Next Floor.
Candyman. Very nice surprise! I liked that it was a sequel rather than a remake. I liked how they used music by Philip Glass. I liked how they expanded on some of the themes from the first film and also that they seemed to ignore the previous sequels… Little Woods. Also by Nia DaCosta who made the new Candyman. Former dealer of medicine to poor people goes over the border to a more civilized country for one last job.
Possessor. Second major film by Brandon Cronenberg after Antiviral. They have something special about them. Similar feeling to David Cronenberg, but still has his own voice.
She Never Died. Sequel to He Never Died. While Jason Krawczyk wrote and directed the first one, this was directed by Audrey Cummings. Interesting wolrd-building, using biblical/mythical characters to do something new with them. Made me want to rewatch God’s Army, but that one hadn’t aged as well as I’d thought…
Stumbled upon The Endless, by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. No prior knowledge, no expectations but it turned out to be some kind of low-key cosmic horror, so I checked out the prequel, Resolution (is it still a prequel if it came before the sequel?). That one was also good, and I don’t think it hurt to see them in the wrong order. Just like the previously mentioned directors, this pair seems to be something to keep track of. So I tried a later film, Spring, which felt less special but still ok, and their latest, Synchronic which is a time travel film with Anthony Mackie. “Time travel is always a good thing in a movie,” I usually think. I’m pretty sure it’s not true, and a botched time travel movie just makes me angry. This one held together just fine.
Palm Springs is another time travel movie that works even better. Light-hearted comedy.
Raging Fire. Hong Kong action by Benny Chan with references to the old John Woo classics. Ignore the copaganda and it works. BuyBust. Action from the Philippines, directed by Erik Matti. Pretends but fails to be something else, but it’s impossible to ignore the cynical copaganda in this one. Poor people as zombies…
Aniara. Swedish sci fi. Spaceship on a short trip to Mars gets redirected and flies off into space. Passengers forced to make a society but fail miserably. Avenue 5. US sci fi TV series. Spaceship on a short trip back from Mars(?) gets redirected and flies off into space. Passengers forced to make a society but fail hilariously. Human, Space, Time and Human by Kim Ki-Duk. A ship is going somewhere. Passengers turn it into it’s own microsociety but fail horribly. Seen it described as “proletarian horror” which I think is a good genre description. There’s a deep hatred for class-based Capitalist society at worl here.
Rubber’s Lover by Shozin Fukui (who also made 964 Pinocchio). 1990s Japanese extreme cyberpunk. Black/white and contrasty. Can you create ESP abilities by inducing pain? Let’s find out. I knew this wan’t what you’d describe as an “easy watch”, so it took me a while before I finally watched this, after having it for years, just waiting for the right moment.
Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky. Chinese splatter classic that I also saw after knowing about it for a long time. Fun if you’re in the right mood, which I was.
Dune. Already wrote some thoughts about this one. Very promising, but will we ever get to see God Emperor of Dune on film?
Zone 414. Very cyberpunky cyberpunk.
Reminiscence. Sci fi noir by Lisa joy, in the subgenre: “what if we had the technology to dive into people’s memories?”.
Speaking of noir, Ed Brubaker made a TV series together with Nicholas Winding-Refn: Too Old to Die Young. Criminals and corrupt cops. Feels pretty typical for both of them, in a good way.
Train to Busan. One of the better zombie films I’ve seen lately.
The Old Guard. Based on a comic. About a bunch of old people fighting. I mean, a group of immortal soldiers. Fighting and having relationships and long-lasting friendships.
The Beach Bum. By Harmony Korine, who is an interesting filmmaker. Matthew McConaughey as a cool dude (what we in Sweden would call a “skön snubbe”) who hangs around the beach, living on his rich girlfriend’s (wife’s?) money like a superficial philosopher/stoner. Some stuff happens. Snoop is there…
Gunpowder Milkshake. Fun action comedy. Loses a bit with the big fight in the end, but some parts were really good, like the hospital scene where the main character, played by Karen Gillan, has to fight with both arms paralyzed so she tapes knives and a gun to her hands and starts swinging them around.
Trudno Byt Bogom (Hard to Be a God). Existential misery in medieval mud. The book seems more interesting.
The Atrocity Exhibition. Film version of book by JG Ballard. Either it is mostly still images with voice-over, or it feels like it.
Fast Company. One of the more straight-forward, and also one of the earliest David Cronenberg movies (from 1979). Drama about a bunch of car racers. If you’re in the right mood.
The Lighthouse. I feel like I want to like it more than I do. The VVitch was much more my thing.
Om det Oändliga (About Endlessness). Roy Andersson is always Roy Andersson. Made in much the same style, but maybe not as memorable, as Sånger från Andra Våningen or Du Levande, which may be mostly because they came first, or because they’re simply better.
Weekend by Jean-Luc Godard. Another classic I finally watched. Kind of overrated I’d say. This is one of the few (or the only) 3/5 film I’m mentioning here. It deserves a mention just because I neither liked nor hated it, I guess. Maybe if I’d get more into French New Wave cinema, but do I have to?
The Dead Don’t Die was also a good zombie film. I know some people don’t like it, probably because they expected something else from Jim jarmusch? I can’t really see what’s not to like, it’s fun! Also saw The Limits of Control. Also good but in another way that feels more like a Jarmusch.
Noah by Darren Aronofsky. I decided that I loved Aronofsky’s films ever since I saw Pi: Faith in Chaos, but it took me a while before I watched this one. Didn’t really feel like watching a Bible film. Technically, I guess this is more of a Torah film. Or rather, it’s the movie version of parts of The Book of Enoch, so I saw this after I read the book. I liked that Noah was basically a doomsday prepper who got a psychosis. It felt original and like a reasonable interpretation of the whole situation.
While we’re on the subject of religion-adjacent things… I watched Cthulhu by Dan Gildark and Grant Cogswell. Thought I hadn’t seen it before but it turned out I had, I just liked it a lot more this time. Probably because I saw it in a different way after having seen an analysis pointing out that it’s not actually a cosmic horror flick so much as it’s the story of a gay man who comes home to his conservative religious family. It’s just that their religion is the Cthulhu mythos and they kind of live in Innsmouth. Color Out of Space. Richard Stanley/Nicholas Cage/Lovecraft is a good mix, as it turns out, unsurprisingly. Some people don’t like it, but I don’t really see how it could have been done better.
I felt it was time to catch up on the films by Sion Sono. So I did. I seem to really like the manipulative-seriel killer/psycho ones best (Cold Fish, The Forest of Love). Especially Cold Fish left me quite affected, on a level with Suicide Club or Strange Circus. Followed by the more laid-back/experimental/slow drama ones (Into a Dream, The Land of Hope, Tag). Ok, Tag isn’t really a slow drama, more like chaotic splatter with meta elements, but still… Tokyo Vampire Hotel was really hard to find and took me a while after I heard about it. I had to get a trial account of Amazon Prime to be able to see it. Crazy shit, could have been better but was also kind of what I expected/hoped for. The sex/superhero comedy (The Virgin Psychics) and the prostitution-themed films (Guilty of Romance, Shinjuku Swan, Shinjuku Swan II) had the least appeal to me (these are the 3/5 ones).
Shield of Straw by Takashi Miike reminded me a bit of Yoshihiro Nakamura‘s Golden Slumber in a good way, but with more violence. Not as over-the-top as some of Miike’s other productions.
While on the subject of directors I like, I saw two new films by Spike Lee, both of them very good: Da 5 Bloods was good but maybe not that special, while Pass Over was the one that struck the hardest even if it’s more of a filmed theatre performance. Very good film for explaining the summer of George Floyd and BLM, except it came two years earlier which just shows that the problem is so much bigger than one specific event. I can’t recommend it enough.
Seven Samurai turned out to be much better after having seen a lot more by Akira Kurosawa than I had the first time around. Or maybe I was just more mentally aligned this time because now it was much better. The Lady Snowblood movies had been on my list of things to watch for a long time. Now I did. Just like the mangas, I liked the Lone Wolf & Cub movies better…
Doctor Sleep. Not sure what I expected but I guess I was hoping that this sequel to The Shining would at least be watchable. Stay away from it. Last Night in Soho made me understand that I just don’t like most of Edgar Wright‘s movies. Shaun of the Dead being the main exception. It doesn’t even help that this is (kind of) a time travel movie. So is Tenet. I think Christopher Nolan is generally good and I like his ideas, but compared to Memento or Inception, this one just doesn’t hold up. There are some cool scenes, but there are too many things that are just a bit dumb. But not as dumb as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I don’t think there are many who’d disagree about that, but I felt the same way about The Mandalorian and now I don’t feel like watching any more Star Wars. They finally broke me.
And then there’s Terminator: Dark Fate. If they had concentrated on making a good movie, and at least tried to do something original, this could have been really great. It has potential but it all got eaten up by nostalgia-baiting. Terminator 2 was a well-told story with ground-breaking effects that hold up 30 years later, some scenes with genuine feelings of excitement and a sense that things are at stake. This one? Some of the action sequences may look good, but there’s never any doubt about how they’re going to end. Or rather, there’s never a sense that we’re supposed to care about anything more interesting than: will Arnold wear sunglasses in this one? Because he did in the first two (most of the rest of the franchise is admittedly even worse). Will he trample any slo-mo flowers? Because he did that too before and those details must be why people loved the old ones! They could have expanded on the world of Terminator, instead of just regurgitated it. Just watch the trailer with that Björk song over and over again instead, it’s much better.
Just like it’s hard to speak about US comics without talking about superheroes, the same is now true for US movies. So…
The MCU is keeping it up with movies and TV series that are all good but not enough to be great, is the short story. WandaVision looked innovative, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier took up some interesting aspects of the overall MCU storyline, Black Widow was probably the most entertaining recent one, Hawkeye was fun but its main thing was the guest characters, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was nice to see Marvel do a Chinese Kung Fu movie, Eternals was a movie, Loki was pretty cool, What If…? lived up to the (mostly) blandness of the comics equivalent, Spider-Man: No Way Home was (also) probably the most entertaining recent one?
Spider-man-related non-MCU Marvel: Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage were better than expected, but should really be seen as one movie, since the first one is more of an intro than a story in itself. They manage to balance on the right side of being funny in a way that could easily have tipped over into “failing to be funny” territory.
X-men-related non-MCU Marvel: Legion still rules among the Marvel TV series. The Gifted wasn’t too bad either, and The New Mutants was ok. It had its failings (like whitewashing some characters) but it got some things right and it was a good idea to turn it into more of a horror story.
Other non-MCU Marvel: Cloak & Dagger good (cancelled too soon), Runaways bad, dropped it after first season which was ok but then it got stupid), MODOK worst (couldn’t get through more than a few episodes).
DCEU: The Suicide Squad actually managed to be quite entertaining. Maybe not suprprising considering James Gunn knows what he’s doing. Wonder Woman 1984 and Zack Snyder’s Justice League on the other hand… Sure, the Snyder cut was slightly better than Whedon’s version in some ways, but it still sucks, and it didn’t help that they spent the last half hour or more slapping on a bunch of fan service, easter eggs and build-up to a sequel that probably won’t come. Even a black/white version won’t cover up the fact that Snyder doesn’t understand any of the characters he’s working with. I don’t even know what to say about WW1984. Only thing I remember is that it failed even harder then the first one’s attempted feminism.
Superman III on the other hand, which I hadn’t seen since the 1900s, turned out to be possibly the best Superman movie so far, with its stupid comedy that doesn’t even try taking itself seriously while still being better than any of the new ones.
Doom Patrol still rules among the DCEU TV series (not that I’m even watching the rest). Watchmen was better than the movie and it had some parts that were better than the rest, but it still felt wrong and I’m not interested in seeing more of it. Y the Last Man. Seemed promising after the frist few episodes, but then I found out it had been cancelled and couldn’t make myself see the rest (yet). Swamp Thing was a disappointment, especially considering what the comic is (they based much of it on Alan Moore‘s run). Helstrom was a disappointment, especially considering what the comic is (they based much of it on Warren Ellis‘s run – or did they? I’ve deleted most of it from my memory). Preacher held up pretty well through the whole thing.
It’s interesting with some of these TV series, that they don’t even try to make a big thing of them being based on DC comics. In this day and age, that kind of smells of bad confidence.
Comics adaptations but neither Marvel nor DC: The Boys is going strong, even if it’s toned down a lot compared to the comic, both in outrageousness and in nerd references. Happy! was better than the comic. Deadly Class. A shame it got cancelled. Invincible is a comic I haven’t read, I just heard it’s supposed to be good. Looking forward to future seasons of this. Supercrooks had a promising first episode, but halfway through the second I had enough of it, for some reason. It felt too juvenile or something. Maybe I was just too tired?
There have been a few animated game adaptations that have been really good. Especially Arcane which was a big surprise. Very well-made, in a style that worked even better than I’d have guessed. Warren Ellis‘ adaptation of Castlevania is also well worth a watch. The fourth and final season was released last summer.
Ping Pong did a great job of channeling Taiyo Matsumoto’s art, using distorted perspectives to enhance the sense of movement. A manga/anime about ping pong doesn’t sound appealing but it still works.
It’s interesting how both Star Trek: Lower Decks and The Orville can feel so much more like Star Trek than Star Trek: Discovery does. I like both of them for that reason, but dropped Discovery a bit into season 2. On the other hand, the first season of Star Trek: Picard is easily among the best Star Trek ever, counting TV series as well as movies, for several reasons. It’s one long story told over the entire season, which appeals to me. It’s the same that made seasons 3 and 4 of Torchwood the ones I like best from that series as well. But that’s just the format. The main thing is this: Star Trek for me hasn’t felt right since the ends of Voyager and Deep Space Nine. Enterprise missed the point by being set too early in the history of the Federation. It’s too close to our time. It also had a bunch of other problems, but I think those are related to the same thing. Same goes actually for both the rebooted timeline in the JJ Abrams movies and in Discovery. Discovery also isn’t set in the same universe, really, and I thought the scripts got kind of stupid in the second season. Picard, on the other hand, is set in the right timeline and does everything right. We get a future where the baseline is more or less a socialist utopia, the same world as Voyager and DS9, where money has been abolished and the only real Capitalists in the galaxy are the Ferengi, little ugly sexist trolls that no one likes. But Picard builds further on that world. Something has broken the Federation. It no longer holds onto its old ideals, but in this case it works, because Picard and the rest of the main characters still do. It’s refreshing to follow a character with that kind of integrity for once. He isn’t flawless as a person, but when it comes to ideology he stands for something greater than himself. The series also manages to refer back to what’s come before without falling into a bush of memberberries (see South Park season 20 for that reference). It isn’t nostalgia-bait as fan service, it’s call-backs that make sense and that work for the story.
Twin Peaks season 4 came and went and was great and I guess now we just need to wait 25 years for season 5 yaay!
The most special thing about Squid Game was that it got so big. I mean it was ok, but not THAT special. Hellbound was much more interesting (if we’re comparing Korean TV series that got internationally big) with its take on religious reactions to when supernatural things actually start happening, and how that can go wrong.
Norwegian series Beforeigners is among the better things I’ve seen lately. It feels finished now after 2 seasons where they bound together all the threads pretty nicely, but there’s big potential for it to branch out. It’d be cool to see spin-offs set in the same world but in other countries. People timigrating from the 1700s or a thousand years ago or the stone age would be another thing in other cultural contexts.
Future Man. Third and final season was released and it kept the quality going til the end. I want to say that if you like Killjoys, this is for you, because the humor is similar in some ways. But it’s also a different kind of story. Probably the best thing to come out of the brain of Seth Rogen, if that sounds good to you. If it doesn’t, I understand but would still recommend this. It’s a time travel story from people who understand the genre and can have fun with it without getting lost in the plotholes they dig themselves into, like some other entries in the genre (I’m looking at you, Timeless and Legends of Tomorrow. Yes, you. Go cry in the shame room).
Aand I guess I might as well talk about The Matrix Resurrections now as well, even though I didn’t technically watch it last year. It started kind of interesting. The flashbacks from the original trilogy were maybe a bit much but I thought it was ok. When the fighting started I felt the absence of Yuen Woo-Ping‘s fight direction and from there it was just downhill. None of the innovation of the old movies was left, none of what made them special. This one just followed the steps from beginning to end like they just wanted to get it over with. I really wanted this to be good, and I’m sure Lana Wachowski still cares and wanted to make a worthy sequel, but no. In the end it felt like just another cash grab.
I think that’s all I had to say about things I’ve watched in 2020/2021, so I’ll just leave you with a list of general recommendations. Some of the things I’ve been watching (and enjoying, so I’m not mentioning some stuff that got boring after a while, like Stranger Things…) but don’t have any comments about at the moment: The Nevers | Raised by Wolves | Foundation | Weird City | Lovecraft Country | Electric Dreams | Made for Love | Community | Devs | Maniac | Killjoys | Dark (except it lost its thing in the 3rd season) | Cobra Kai | South Park | Undone | Rick & Morty | Archer | What we do in the shadows | Good Omens | American Gods | Dopesick
Almost finished with this seemingly endless (or maybe that’s just me?) listing of various ways to escape the stupid consensus reality that we’re generally forced to live in for some reason. Up next: GAMES Also don’t miss my reading tips: -Escapism 2020/2021 pt1a: What I read -Escapism 2020/2021 pt1b: More things I read -Escapism 2020/2021 pt1c: Even more things I read -Escapism 2020/2021 pt1d: Further readings
Let’s start with some Manga. No 5 by Taiyo Matsumoto is finally being published in English! The first 2 books in the series was published long ago and it was my first discovery of Matsumoto. My first impression was that it was a Japanese comic with heavy influences from Moebius and US action comics. After reading more of him, that impression has evolved into just a love of his line work and a form of naivistic expression that somehow turns into realism without looking like realism. It’s hard to describe properly but I want it! I mean I want to be able to do the same thing. Those hands, those faces, that sense of movement, his use of shadows under water! The first edition of No 5 never continued after those first books in English. More came out in French, but I’m not sure even those editions covered the whole series. Anyway, now it’s coming, the whole thing in 5 volumes from VIZ Media. The 2 earlier both fit in the first of the new ones, which is all I’ve read so far.
Another classic(?) manga is Opus, by Satoshi Kon, who is mostly known for is work in anime such as Paranoia Agent, Perfect Blue and Paprika. Opus is a meta story of a manga artist ending up within his own comic. I’m not sure what I thought of. I guess it was ok, it’s an early work by Kon and was left unfinished for years. Not as interesting as what he did later, but nice to see where he came from. On the other hand, I re-read the first volumes of Samurai Assassin by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, and that’s never a bad idea.
I finally got around to reading Palestine by Joe Sacco. I’ve been putting it off because I thought it would be emotionally taxing. Which wasn’t wrong, but sometimes it’s worth it to learn more, even about things you already kind of know. If you don’t know already, Palestine is Sacco’s journalistic report about Palestine, first published in the mid-1990s. Lots of mud and misery and people who have been in Israeli prison camps. Stories of torture and resistance. I went on to read Footnotes in Gaza (also by Sacco), which is more specific in its subject, concentrating on one part of the conflict, showing both the current (when the book was written, a bit over 10 years ago) situation in Gaza with the constant and mostly arbitrary bulldozing of people’s houses, and researched events from the earlier days of the occupation, all based on eyewitness accounts and some comparisons with official documents. From the inception of Gaza as a refugee camp created by people who had been driven from their homes by the Israeli occupation to a couple of events on the way to the now of ca 2009. Is “nazi-esque” a word? I think it’d be a good description of the mass murders depicted in this book. It gives a broader image of daily life in Gaza now and then. However, the main event is a massacre that took place in Rafah in 1956, where all the men were rounded up, driven like cattle to a schoolyard, and my words can’t do it justice in the same way the comic does. Hundreds of civilians were systematically murdered and whoever says that the situation is too “complicated” to choose sides is by default an apologist for things like this. Read it.
Zombier, zombier, zombier is a Swedish non-comics anthology about zombies, from different perspectives. Some more interesting than others. Best was the text by Mathias Wåg who wrote about zombies as allegory for popular mass movements and how they have been seen and depicted historically.
More non-comics (before we go back to the more advanced form of literature that is the picture-book): Exterminate all the Brutes (orig: Utrota Varenda Jävel) and the sequel The Skull Measurer’s Mistake: And Other Portraits of Men and Women Who Spoke Out Against Racism (orig: Antirasister: människor och argument i kampen mot rasismen 1750-1900), both by Sven Lindqvist (I read them in the wrong order, one in Swedish and one in English, but it doesn’t matter). Both highly recommended. Exterminate all the Brutes is an examination of Joseph Conrad, his book Heart of Darkness, and the time and social climate that surrounding him. Which means it’s about European colonialism, primarily in Africa, during the 1700-1800s and a bit into the mid-1900s. We tend to treat the Holocaust as a unique event. Lindqvist that it’s not unique at all, just a logical continuation of things that happened in the European discourse of the preceeding centuries. The main difference between the Holocaust and the earlier colonialism was that it took place within Europe. But the ideas it was based on were things like some races being obsolete and ripe for extinction, races being both biological and cultural, the need for space for the superior race to expand and flourish. These ideas fall apart when you look closer at them (as should be, but isn’t, apparent for everyone nowadays), but they were totally dominant during that period, enabling for example the genocide in Leopold II’s Congo and other atrocities that cost millions of lives. Which becomes even more clear in Antirasister (I’m using the titles in the language I read the books). It explores documented instances of people who questioned the paradigm of White supremacy. White supremacy sounds like an extremist view these days, but not long ago it was simple the generally accepted truth to the extent that it didn’t even need to be said out loud most of the time. Even the dissenting voices were affected by the paradigm. Most examples are things like someone figuring out that Jews should be regarded as people too, but forgetting the extend the same courtesy to Native Americans. Or someone writing an article against slavery that no one really took seriously. Small, individual drops against an ocean of racism. If things go as planned, I will be involved in an exhibition working with this themes later this year, so I will be sharing some more thoughts and insights about it then. By the way, Exterminate all the Brutes also exists as a documentary series on HBO Max that I plan to watch at some point.
Back to comics, but sticking with the nazis… Monsters by Barry Windsor-Smith was originally meant to be an alternate take on The Hulk, something like Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X that redefined parts of Wolverine’s backstory, but that never happened. Instead, it was recently released as its own graphic novel, published by Jonathan Cape/Penguin Random House. It’s a black/white story, written and drawn by BWS, dealing with child abuse, military science experiments, and nazi scientists imported to the US after the second world war. In short: monsters and monstrosities. By an artist who still lives up to the hype.
Another classic comics creator is Charles Burns, probably best known for Black Hole. Last Look is a collection of 3 books from a period of about 10 years. Maybe not as captivating as Black Hole, but that could be because this is a much shorter story. In short, it’s about this guy who is bad at relationships. It’s also told in a non-linear way with lots of dream sequences. It all comes together very satisfyingly.
Shaolin Cowboy: Who’ll Stop the Reign by Geoff Darrow brings more details and crazy fights and a big altright pig. We just can’t seem to get away from that theme in this post, can we? Anyway, Darrow is crazy as usual and seems to really truly enjoy drawing comic panels that other artists would run from, screaming in panic.
More visual storytelling: The Thousand Demon Tree by Jeffrey Alan Love is all about the visuals. Large format and amazingly stylized, it tells a story that evokes a sense of grandiosity that is quite similar to some scenes in the game Shadow of the Colossus. Meanwhile, The Arrival by Shaun Tan is (mostly) much more low-key. Like The Thousand Demon Tree, it’s told only in images with no text and is a story about migration in what seems to be a fantastical version of old-school New York, from the era of “bring me your huddles masses”. That feeling, but with fantasy animals and architecture and weirdness.
Speaking of migration… I don’t think I’ve written before about Club Mediterrâneo – doze fotogramas e uma devoração? Based on a poem by João Pedro Mésseder, it’s illustrated by Ana Biscaia with typography by Joana Monteiro. Ana and Joana were guests at AltCom 2018 and brought this book with them. Just wanted to mention it because it’s a very nice book about a not-so-nice situation for refugees coming to Europe over the Medierranean…
Oskar Aspman, one of my co-founders of CBK, recently used the risograph at the Malmö University to print Nightshine, a zine version of an old comic from C’est Bon, but remixed with new color and halftone and resurrected text from his original draft. Very nice, halftone-y and his usual kind of dirty line work. Also re-read the Piracy is Liberation books by Mattias Elftorp (name sounds familiar somehow) recently. I’m happy and relieved that they still hold up. I did it mostly as research since I’m getting ready to start working on book 012 of the series, finally, ten years later. Just waiting for my work situation to change so I’m allowed to draw more than 1,77h/week again (long irritating story for another time)…
As you may suspect, I make lists of everything I read. It sounds a bit OCD(?), but is mostly so I don’t forget as easily. It’s also a great help for when I do these annual review posts. And maybe a bit of OCD? I hope you get something out of it. If you’ve read some of the things I talk about you can figure out something about my tastes, and you can use that to figure out if you should check out some of the things I mention that you haven’t read.
So Karen Berger is back, editing a new imprint at Dark Horse since a while back. Now and then I think about how she is one of those individuals who have a massive impact on something that would have been completely different in their absence. Without her there would (probably) be no Sandman, no Hellblazer, no Invisibles, no Preacher, no Transmetropolitan and so much more since she was running DC Vertigo where all these came from.
Anyway, the imprint is called Berger Books and so far I’ve read two series from it, both written by Ann Nocenti, who used to write, for example, Daredevil, Kid Eternity, Typhoid Mary etc. These two books are The Seeds and Ruby Falls. The first of which is a kind of experimental dystopian story with aliens and people in gas masks walking around in wastelands and stylish black/white art by David Aja. Ruby Falls is more straight-forward, drawn by Flavia Biondi, about a woman trying to solve an old crime in the small town where she lives. I recommend both, but The Seeds appealed to me the most.
The publisher I probably follow the most ongoing comics from these days is Image Comics, so let’s talk about some books from (mostly) them:
Did you watch the TV version of Deadly Class? It was cancelled after one season which is too bad, because it was a pretty good adaptation of a very good comic by Rick Remender and Wes Craig. They’re currently up to 10 collections. Another one by Remender, with beautiful art by Greg Tocchini, is Low, which was finally finished. It took a while before the final part came out, but it was well worth the wait. It’s about a future where the sun got too big and hot so humanity had to move down under the sea, but the remaining civilizations are dying and the only hope is a probe returning that might contain information about an inhabitable world that we might move to. One of the main characters has adopted a kind of religion based on wishful thinking, like in The Secret, a book that is popular in certain circles of mostly rich people. The secret is that positive thinking can make you successful, basically. I don’t believe in that crap, but that doesn’t mean the comic doesn’t work. It is sci fi, after all, and the drawings are fucking gorgeous.
I finished Jeff Lemire‘s Black Hammer (with Dean Ormston) and Gideon Falls (with Andrea Sorrentino). I kept reading Lazarus by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark and I also read Rucka’s The Old Guard, with art by Leandro Fernandez, which you may recognize from the Netflix film adaptation. I liked both the film and the comic. I think I enjoy things that put our lives into perspective, like a story about a bunch of immortals can do if it’s done well.
Monstress deserves a special mention. As I wrote in my last post, I enjoyed Marjorie Liu‘s Astonishing X-men very much. Monstress is her own story, drawn by Sana Takeda in a pretty unique, manga/fantasy-inspired style. Interesting characters, impressive world-building in a story about a girl who is more than she seems. That’s a very understated description, but I also don’t want to give away any of the story, so…
Michael Gaydos is one of those artists I count as working in the same style category as I do. Not saying that we’re on the same level or that we’re drawing exactly the same, but I believe we have much of the same influences and we’re trying to reach the same or similar feeling in our lines and shadows. He’re worked well together with Brian Michael Bendis on a couple of occasions, like Alias (that the Netflix series Jessica Jones was based on) and now Pearl, from DC comics. It’s a pretty short, finished story collected in 2 books. It reads more like an action film than a superhero story, which makes sense since it’s not even trying to be a superhero story even though it’s part of the normal DC publishing.
Another artist whose work is a huge inspiration to me is Danijel Žeželj. As you probably know if you’ve followed CBA where we’ve published some of his short stories. Unfortunately, much of his books haven’t been published in English (yet, hopefully), but there was at least one last year: Cyberpunk 2077: Your Voice, with script by Aleksandra Motyka and Marcin Blacha. As you might guess, it’s a cyberpunk story set in the world of the Cyberpunk 2077 game that was controversially released about a year ago (that’s a whole story in itself, which I guess I’ll have something to say about after I’ve actually played it myself. Short story: it was release before it was completely finished and the internet people got angry). Beautiful, dark, dystopian cyberpunk, as it should be.
Another pair of creators who worl well together is Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. At the moment, they’re mostly working on their latest series of graphic pulp novels, Reckless. If you’ve read their Criminal, this is kind of similar but also different. It feels new and fresh. Pulp is a good description of the genre. Pulp is also the name of the story they made just before Recklass started coming out. Kind of a stepping stone to that from Criminal, about a former professional criminal who is talked into doing one last job even though he’s retired. Set just before the second world war, about a character who is old enough to have been around during the wild west era. As I was saying, I like stories that put things in perspective, and it fascinates me just like it did Brubaker that those two things took place during the span of one lifetime.
Next time, I’m going into some more history and also some books from the more indie publishers and classic artists… Also, if you missed them, I wrote more about what I’ve read in 2020/2021, linked in the bottom of this post.
The above was written a few days ago. I’ve since finished the book and seen [enough of] the TV version and here’s what I think:
