Comic Book Review: Spawn

I read volume one of the Spawn anthologies. I've been meaning to read the Spawn books ever since the movie killed my soul. I have a history with the character Spawn, going way back before I read him or saw him or anything.

The movie came out when I was thirteen, and one of my buddies became immediately obsessed with the character. I liked this kid, and I've always had a bit of a follower psychology, so I decided to be obsessed with this movie as well, even though I knew nothing about it. Somehow I found a poster or saw a preview for it after that, though, and thusly saw the look, felt the attitude, of the character Hellspawn. That masked face and impossible cape and green eyes lodged in my head, like the shading of a really good ghost story. It impacted my imaginings and my creativity, and much of my writing secretly had a few drops of an idealized Hellspawn in it, because I never saw the movie when it was released, and never knew it was a comic book.

Years passed, and Spawn lurched around the back of my head, till finally I was driven to wikipedia. I read about Spawn, and the Violator, and the world Todd McFarlane invented. The art impressed me, the stories intrigued me, and the fact that the whole thing was a comic book first totally took me by surprise. I got the movie and watched it, and it did, in fact, shatter some of my childhood dreams. Completely obnoxious.

It discouraged me. Thus I failed to speedily procure the comic book.

Several years passed. I had many adventures, and eventually found my lady love. Among her many charms is a picky love of comic books. She loves Todd McFarlane, especially, and I trust her taste, except in liking me. Spawn's been reintroduced to me as a literary pursuit to consider.

The other day, I saw volumes one, three, and four of Spawn anthologies at the library. On an impulse, I grabbed volume one and checked it out. I read it fast, and these are my impressions:

The characters are great, the world is great, the situations are provocative, the art is as pretty a comic book art as you'd want. It's a good book for the reading. It ought to have movied up something gorgeous. Stupid, careless movie mongers, mutilizing it.

I found the overall plot of the anthology irritatingly vague and diffuse, and the story from issue to issue moves more slowly than I'd like. Each issue has fewer revelations than I'd write into them, which is one reason why it ought to have movied up gorgeously. What ought to have happened is a streamlining of the story, so the important bits were emphasized, and the world was made more smelly, and the repetition was repeated less. The movie ought to have been good. I'm frustrated with the hosers who messed up Spawn the movie.

Overall, I like Spawn. I'll read the next anthology. I want more of this world. Todd McFarlane wins.

Fatima

Writing fiction and talking to people who write fiction has taught me that everyone's a sadist. Everyone likes seeing misfortune happen to other people. It's given me a kind of pessimistic view of, like, everything, but in an ironically funny way. Suffering is entertaining, apparently. Weird, but seemingly true. We take a cruel pleasure in seeing people messed with, or messing with them ourselves. Just for chuckles, we're all out to get each other.

Are we all doomed, then, to being quietly and politely evil forever? I posit not.

Sometimes, I see people with a kind of reverse sadism. Two days ago, I was at the dentist, and this fellow walked in, clearly not feeling that great. Feeling bitchy, I thought. And, upon seeing this dude, the hygenist got this huge, wicked smile on her face, and proceeded to try and cheer him up. The thing being that her methods were distinctly insidious. Through evil prodding and jabbing she probably got him in a tolerable mood inside of five minutes. They walked out of the room, and I didn't see the guy again. But I'd talked to that particular hygenist before, and she's kind of contagious.

There she was, taking a wicked pleasure in insidiously causing another human being happiness. It was kind of weird, but not really all that weird.

We aren't all evil, that's what the moral of the story is.... Or maybe we are all evil, but sometimes our evil would prefer seeing happiness rather than suffering. We greedily want our way. That's kind of evil. Maybe some people evilly just want good stuff to happen.... I'm confused, now.

Those greats, and these greats

I wonder which rock and rollers Mozart would listen to. I expect he'd like Queen, would Mozart. There's possibly enough musicallity in that stuff to entertain him. I bet Mozart would like the Stones as well; I bet he and Kieth would have a rip-roaring time. And the Stones have all the class. Pink Floyd: Mozart would love Pink Floyd.

Beethoven would probably listen to the Ramones. The Ramones are loud enough. Not just that, but Beethoven really got into this idea of revolution. He'd probably listen to the Sex Pistols too.... Beethoven probably wouldn't listen to a lot of different music, actually. Beethoven had the music in his head.

Charles Baudelaire would like Rob Zombie. I don't know too much about Baudelaire or Zombie, just a sort of attitude. They both seem nose-thumbingly pseudo-misanthropic enough, and thrilled enough at carnage, that probably Baudelaire would get all kinds of fun from Rob Zombie.

Queen Elizabeth I would listen to the Beatles, of course. She'd like them for being English. I expect she'd hate Elvis, or make fun of him anyway, just because the man wasn't that smart. I bet that Bess would listen to AC/DC too; turn it up loud and force everyone else to listen along. AC/DC is probably shocking enough for Queen Elizabeth.

Alexander the Great ought to listen to Steppenwolf. I think he'd do well with Steppenwolf, but I don't know a lot about the guy's mind so I ain't sure.

M*A*S*H much?

"This place is bringing low to a new high,"--Klinger

My family is watching M*A*S*H, and I'm so impressed with the writing that I'm not watching it. A little while ago my mom started procuring the DVDs for the M*A*S*H series and my family has been watching them and I've been awestruck by the sheer humor, poignancy, seriousness, lightness, and massy cleverness of the writing. Each episode is great by itself, and there's an evolutionary arc that's great as well. Everything about it strikes me more or less into humility and awe.

But I don't watch it. I sit a room away and guess at the plot, or write something else, or nap, or do school. Most anything else. Out of the seven some odd seasons my family has watched of it so far I've seen maybe ten or twelve episodes. Probably eleven. I'm not drawn to immersing myself in the vocabulary and world of it, for some reason. X-files, Firefly, Buffy, the Alien movies, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Carribean, kung fu movies...all the other random stuff I've been impressed with I'll devote hours together of attention to, become nauseated through the absorption, and then walk around like an over-rested and bored zombie for hours.

My buddy saw Coraline! He said it was good...

That wasn't meant to be related.

I haven't been able to discern the emotional motivation behind my not being attracted to actually watching M*A*S*H. It's an incredibly educational show, from a story telling view. For days now I've been curious why I'm so happy with being two or three rooms away from the television and just listening to snippets of it, and not curious to go see the depth and prosperity of the show. I still don't know they I'm sitting over here typing this instead of sitting over there watching that apparently palsaic wounded soldier with possible brain damage make fascinating piano music while the camp annoying, pretentious bastard looks on in awe... I'm confused.

Painting a Horcrux

Art is a piece of the inside of a person for all to see, scoff at, or admire. No matter how cynical or biased towards the mundane you are it cannot be denied that the time and energy and imagination and sometimes sheer baldness that goes into a painting, for instance, makes it a piece of a person.

Artists, the famous ones, tend to be crazy people. All the ones I've heard of anyway were loony in some manner. But I think they'd have to be. They're putting their souls on display like that. Just opening the doors in their head and letting the monsters and the cherubs and the weirdness and the simplicity out to fall as it may onto canvas. And then they showed this mess of their souls, these congealed puddles of psychosis, to other people. Our insides are private, that's why they're inside of us. So of course really excellent painters go crazy. They can puke out the truth of who they are. Then, horror of horrors, they can actually look at their innermost selves. Which would be bad, except then other people can see the shapes and colors of the artist's ghosts as well.

True works of art are a person's soul spread around and scrutinized.

Just a little windswept

They say that characters have minds of their own, and they say that stories can kind of write themselves. I've always been skeptical, because I believe myself to be master of my imaginings.

That's my opening statement. Here's where I'm going:

My novel has been coming in chunks recently. They seem like sizable chunks as I write, and I'm always surprised when, instead of ten pages, I have five. I wondered where the surprise came from until I figures out how much I was actually thinking about this story as I've been writing it. Because of the sheer volume of attention I'm devoting to it two things are happening: when I take breaks, my head hurts; and I truly expect larger chunks of prose.

Admittedly, this novel hasn't, so far, been a shining example of beautiful English, but it has, as it were, been "writing itself" mostly. The beginning I had to force into existence, flinty and sparky and kindling makes story. But then I just sort of steered a little and pointed out scenic attractions; the story's tour guide through the murky parts of my imagination. Just over the last spread, though--the last thirty pages, maybe--I've started to move further back from the front, even. The tour group that my story was had started taking its own initiative, at least that's how it felt. And now I'm, more or less, straggling in the back, trying as hard as I can to just keep up while my tour group of a story hares along at a thousand curiosities a second.

It's gotten so that I like to just take a break every now and then. Not to think about what to put next, but to figure out what just happened so I can understand where I am now.

Comfortingly, I can put it back into a track for a while after that. I'm glad I still have some control over it.

My head hurts.

Gad-ahful Telephone Surveys...

"It'll only take a few minutes of your time,"--Telephone Survey People

I hate telephone surveys and I'll tell you why. I am not a statistic. That's about the whole of it. Sure, telephone surveys could have practical use and application, but I personally spend too much of my time carefully crafting my opinions into sentences to spend any of my time trying to conform my generally imperfectly catagorizable opinions into neat, multiple choice answers to PC, vague, gender neutered questions. My instinctual answers to questions like, "Out of one to ten, one being least interested, ten being most interested, what is your interest level in cheese?" is invariably, "I like strong Irish chedder better than weak mozzerella...except when it comes to lasagna, in which case ricotta-parmesian balance is more important for flavor, and glucosity is key in choosing mozzerella. But as far as cheese by itself, Irish chedder."

Then they pause, and say, "So...is that maybe a six?"

The surveys always continue on that vein. The questions tend to be too vague, mostly. If they say, "How strongly do you feel about raising taxes? Strongly, medium strong, medium medium, medium weak, or loser-ass wobbly-chin?" My answer is, "Weh-hell, my boy, I do hate paying taxes. But where is this money going? Public transportation? Higher education? Hydrogen fuel research? The space program?" To which he replies, "...Is that a loser-ass wobbly-chin?"

There should just always be the option to answer all survey questions with an essay. A, B, C, D, or Essay. I might be happy then.

I have unstatistical opinions. That's really most of it, I think. I'm not educated enough to simply say yes or no to educated questions, and I'm too skeptical to even think that I'm being asked educated questions, and I'm too curious to shut down the thinking bits of my head and just answer the questions I hear as stated.

"Do you approve of gravity?" the surveyor asks.

"Yes," I say, "with the following stipulations..."

Order of WTF

Know what I wonder is the order that the internet chooses to ping various networked together websites about different alerts.

Like the "you have facebook e-mail" e-mail you get in your attached e-mail account.

If you're plugged into YIM, does YIM get the alert that you got an e-mail before your e-mail account gets an alert that you got an e-mail in your facebook? I feel pretty certain that YIM gets pinged before your e-mails get to your inbox. In which case, what the hell is up? It isn't as if knowing that you have an e-mail does you the slightest good without actually HAVING the e-mail. It's sort of stupid.

Yep. I ask the tough questions. The really biting issues. I ask the questions that nobody else thinks up.

The Strange Case of Dr Me-writer and Mr Me-logician

So I have this peculiar problem. I spend an afternoon typing up fiction, and it's all good, I move the plot along, increase the page and word count appreciably, yadda yadda yadda, fun and games, etc. Good news.

Comes five o'clock--generally it's five o'clock--and I'm not written out, but I choose to quit. Usually I choose to quit due to the encroachment of this living colors thing. The parts of my life with realistic commitments attached, like eating, peeing, and socializing. The stride that I feel like I've hit in the afternoon doesn't feel strode out yet, but I decide that "quit while you're ahead" is a good strategy. Take a break is a good strategy. Come back to it later is a good strategy.

Around then the logician begins to push in on my creativity. After these encroaching, living color commitments are all took care of and all, I think to myself, "Hey, I've got some stride left. Why not go back to fiction land and play for a while? I haven't messed up the lives of these imaginary characters yet. It'd be fun, and further my whole 'want to be a novelist' outlook on life. Make me feel professional, and justified."

But I remember those times when the writer in me ran dry. The logician in me remembers those times the writer got confused and the goat in me pushed through the muzzy eyes and produced unpleasing prose, which the critic in me got bored of, and the cynic in me used as justification to stop writing altogether for quite some time. Telling the lamb in me that I obviously had written myself into a corner, that I no longer had inspiration, and I should wait for the artist in me to rejuvenate and reassert itself.

Such multiplicity. I'm so confused.

Recently, the craftsman in me is stronger than the artist. Artistry, to me, has come to be so much unimaginative, feel-good morallity, important because it provides the gut reaction to the living colors trying to screw with my opus, but useless as a driving force or a forming ideal or any kind of well of invention. The craft of the thing is of greater, more interesting, and more potent reality....

And the logician says, "That is so much over-impassioned hash."

Thus most of my evenings are spent quietly waiting for the dawn, when the circumstances will again be right for the writer in me to assert itself once again over the mathematician, and rise to create those things which will be my legacy.

In the meantime, I'll be writing blogs as if they were monologs by various characters from Andromeda. Go me. Woot.

Batman: The Dark Knight. A Joker Phenomenon

Feel free to read this only after you've seen the movie. If you haven't yet, you should. It was awesome.

So in the middle of the ocean, on an ocean liner, in the pool, on a floaty, a man chokes on his cocktail and dies.... This shouldn't be funny.

Watching The Dark Knight I kept experiencing a similar phenomenon. Joker--SPOILER ALERT--was in this movie. And he--SPOILER ALERT--did things. It kept happening that these things were really quite funny. But it was hard to laugh at them. One wished to--one saw the humor. But, you see, he is, the Joker--especially this one--such a sick, twisted, psychopathic bastard, that everything he did just seemed too dispicable for any half-way decent human being to find any humor in it. So I sat there, they had Joker do something on the screen, and the laughs were sort of half-assed, because we audience members were clearly embarrassed to find these things funny.

Remarkable, awesome phenomenon.

Personallity

Hey everybody in the world! Find somebody between the ages of nine and fifteen and remember how people are supposed to act! Yegawds. I've had it up to here--this high--with adults. You're a bunch of stinkers.

And when I say "somebody" I mean one somebody. Not some group or another. Sheeshers.

AAAAAAAAH!

TEQUILLA! Everything's going all...wobbly.... I could probably walk...minus the whole, like, getting around thing. It's like tunnel vision, without the tunnel. Like being light headed, but with all this weight. Like sleeping, except snakey 'cause my eyes are open. It's like...wearing off.... Okay...

I don't think I can hold my liquor very well. Not enough Irish gene. Bummer.

Voice Screpency Restoration

Ah, Blue Oyster Cult. Equilibrium begins to be restored.

Voice Indescrepency

So I'm trying to write the next bit of "Don't Get Wet in the Shade" and I've got Eddie Izzards voice running about in my head talking about jam!

My life as a writer has officially become stressful.

How easy you make that appear.

"My neural pathways have become accustomed to your presence,"--Data

I have discovered that I am, in fact, an android. I do not know what consitutes a good smell.

I have discovered, though, that lilac musk is highly stimulating.

Flippy Me and Them

So this thing happened where my mood was effected by the mood of the protagonist in one of my stories. I sort of felt the same things I was describing--his decline into a depth of numbness like he'd never felt before. I don't think I was quite as far gone as him. But I saw an clear and obvious connection between my mood and my protagonist's mood.

So, ever noticed this happening to you? Sort of driv me crazy for a couple days. My character really wasn't feeling so hot.

I LIKE TO DREAM! part 1

"Yes, yes, right between my sound machine,"--John Kay

A whole bunch of my favorite song lyrics have to do with rock and roll. Not too strange an idea, really, just sort of circular, and self actualizing...or self defeating, depending on how you look at it.

I'm fortunate in that I am controllably ADD. That is to say, I can have divided and often opposing feelings about something and not overload or become confused. So to have many of my favorite songs in the rock and roll genre to be on the topic of rock and roll both pleases and displeases me. It pleases me in that these are things which describe something that I like. And displeases me in that these songs seem to have been lazy in their choice of subject matter. They please me in their representing the reality that rock and roll is open to many interpretations. And displeases me that much of the descriptors, ideas, and imagery are predictable, even if you've never heard this particular "I like rock and roll" song.

To be continued...

Happy Anniversary, Alice!

http://www.alicecooper.com/

Alice Cooper. Rockstar, personal buddy of Kieth Richards, possibly Ozzy Osbourn, and Satan--according to his announcer--and proud husband of one Sharyl Goddard, now Sharyl Cooper for thirty-two years, and mother of three little Alices.

...

So rockstars can pretty often have pretty stable relationships. Hmm.

Let us examine, what is a rockstar? A poet. A rage against the man poet. An "I am me--screw the world" poet. Which means what? We're talking self aware, here. We're talking self-awareness taken to an uttermost. We're talking understanding of oneself. Oneself being pretty damned messed up...but one not being a stranger of one, if that makes any sense. Most people, I have observed, have some confusion about who they are and what place they want to or feel that they can fill in the world. But rockstars have that figured out.

So where have we gotten so far? We've established that rockstars are honest. And what, little children, do Hollywood and other echelons of propagandist society agree with experience and reality on what sorts of things working relationships work best upon?

I'm just some kid, but honesty is one of the words I hear a whole bunch.

Rockstars is poets. Poets do poetry because they want to put the inexpressible into words. An emotional and romantic business, no matter how loud you shout it.

So rockstars are emotional honest people.... Why are we surprised they have working marriages? Maybe it has something to do with the eyeliner.

Wobble and Emphasis

One thing that I don't miss about wearing glasses is the wobble. The phenomenon that occurs when I wag my head--too look to my left, say--and the things I see are crunched a little in the edges of the lense. Thereby the swift moving of the head simulates a wobbling or wavering in what I see, because the oddity isn't apparent except when I'm moving.

I've just noticed that I reflexively blink every time I shift my gaze from the screen to the keyboard and vice versa. I wonder if I might have developed a sort of reflex to not see this wobble. An odd sort of testament to us humans trying to keep the world from appearing strange because it unsettles us, if one develops a reflex to block out an odd visual imput.

One thing that I do miss about glasses is the range of emphatic gestures that they include. Taking them off with the sternness of stern looking, for instance. I never utilized my glasses in the emphatic gesturing as much as I now wish I would have. I did do the incredulously looking over the top thing. And I would take them off and rub my eyes tiredly, then leave them off to give weight to my fatigue thing. But such avenues as the poking myself in the eye twice because not everyone noticed my humiliation the first time move I never managed.

Glasses.

Villainy Visited

"What makes a good villain?"--Jenny

"You ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?"--Joker

"A great villain is one you like despite yourself."--Ali

"What kind of punchline is that?"--Joker

"When the villain is introduced, it's up to the storyteller to paint this individual as an adversary worthy of the hero."--Iron John

"What are you going to do? Put me in the loony bin? I'm already here."--Joker

"I think the best conflicts come when the villain and hero are two sides of the same coin,"--Deb

"We're two faces of the same coin, you and I."--Joker

I like what Ali and John said. Deb too. Deb makes a good point. Here's this fourth and related take that I'm taking. John said "has chance of slaughtering hero!" Ali said "we see in heem thing that eez relatable. Yeees, I am Slowpoke Rodriguez, and I don't know why." Deb says, "Same coin, different faces."

I think these are all true. Why is the Joker scary? He's like all the things that Batman is not; entirely untethered. Why reavers frighten we? Same reason. Why does this untethered nature of these creatures frighten us? We see somewhat of ourselves there; the potentiallity for absolute psychotic loopiness.

So here's another thought. Why is it that when Danny DeVito, as directed by Tim Burton, played Penguin, we have a scare? What changed? He was still recognizably the short, three fingered, bird-resembling, pudgy, umbrella-wielding, super-powerless guy. What changed?

Well, I think he was more realistic. More complicated, with Danny DeVito playing him and Tim Burton putting it together. His plight more sympathetic; his thinking more accessible.... And because of his psychosis, this frightens us. We don't really want to empathize with psychotic penguin guy. It's unpleasant.

But it's fascinating.

I think villains derive as much of their fright from the same qualities that heroes get their coolness from. Qualities like humanity, emotion, perseverence, overcoming adversity.

Which has, like bolty lightning, got a thought in my head! Joker, he is not always happy. Is not always laughing. He laughs at inappropriate times and inappropriate thing, which is frightening certainly, but he isn't always laughing. But when he is sad, he is very very sad. And when he is angry, it's heated and volcanic.

He feels with far more intensity than anyone else. At all, ever. Everything. Fast, and completely, his emotions strike him and control his everything. The antithesis of poker-face Dark Knight, certainly; but he's us without inhibition. We relate to emotion, and Joker's emotions are off the richter.

I'm so smart.