"All the Stones the Builders Rejected" 
(And some days it takes more Stones than others...) Where Mythical Bestiary meets Contemporary Culture and Chews On Its Leg Until Covered with Slobber.
Showing posts with label Grant Morrison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grant Morrison. Show all posts
Jack Benny, the X-Men, and Continuity in Comics
Re-reading Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men led me again to its sequel, Joss Whedon's Astonishing--
and I now proclaim to the anxious masses that Torn (Astonishing X-Men Volume III) is best read in tandem with Morrison's Imperial (New X-Men Volume II).
Jack Benny is supposed to have gotten the biggest laugh in radio history when an armed robber snarls, "Your money or your life!" Benny doesn't say anything. The audience explodes. He waits (the power of the pause) and lets them subside before he answers, "I'm thinking about it." The joke works because the audience knew Benny's comedic persona, and knew that he would need time before such a "difficult" choice.
Just so with Whedon's "Torn", in which Cassandra Nova tries to escape by planting herself in Emma Frost's subconscious, then using Frost's manipulative ability to paralyze her captors. Scott is frozen by his deepest anxiety. Henry "devolves" into a feral carnivore. Logan reverts to his Little Lord Fauntleroy childhood.
Logan's "turn into Percy Dovetonsils" works because of the character's backstory; it wouldn't be so funny if the audience wasn't in on the joke.
The first time I read this story, the attack by Emma's psychic avatars was confusing (as it's meant to be) but I shrugged it off and went along for the ride. Read immediately after the Morrison stories and I realized how poignant they were, manifestations of Emma's own guilt and fear. Cassandra Nova personifies Emma's pain at surviving the Genosha genocide; Sebastian Shaw represents Emma's self-loathing in her longest-lasting relationship. I didn't recognize Negasonic Teenage Warhead ("Boy, we really have run out names," Kitty says) until this second or third reading:
She's one of Emma's murdered students, seen for only a few panels in Morrison. The last manifestation, "Perfection" is an early version of Emma herself as the White Queen, dominatrix from Hell. Kitty's reaction matches the readers, as we all thought she'd already left Emma trapped in a cave.
Ordinarily, I dislike comics fans' worship of continuity. It's the inside baseball that drives readers away from serial story telling because some Asberger's/fashion victim just broke into your adult conversation with the news that Squirrel Green Lantern only wore the Star Sapphire costume for three issues in 1967, and he, the fanboy, really likes the second version of Empire Strikes Back but the third one makes no sense. Yes, great artists build up layers upon layers of meaning, allusion and reference in their work, but continuity is not the same as depth.
So what did we (I) learn here today? When writers use continuity in the way that Jack Benny did, the reader's prior knowledge adds layers of pleasure. Used as barbed wire to keep the gentiles away, continuity is a disease. One more reason to promise me you'll never pay money for a comic with Cable on the cover or the word "Crisis" in its title.
The Commonplace Book, November 2006
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." (Thomas Jefferson) 
***
"...the big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart." ( Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
***
“... the very first example of congressional oversight in our history was an inquiry into President George Washington’s deployment of the military. In that case, a committee appointed by the House in 1792 was authorized to investigate the disastrous defeat the year before of Gen. Arthur St. Clair by Indians in the Ohio Territory, with the power to issue subpoenas for “persons, papers and records as may be necessary to assist their inquiries.” (Stanley Brand
***
“.... One day, Tomasello and Paabo were talking in the institute's cafeteria about a family in England with a remarkable genetic defect. Some members of the family have a mutation in a gene known as FOXP2, which helps direct the development of the brain during infancy and childhood. Every family member with the mutation had great difficulty speaking. Paabo had been thinking about how to identify genes that had changed during human evolution to make speech possible, and FOXP2 seemed like a prime candidate. He and his co-workers sequenced the gene—that is, they figured out the order of the DNA bases that make up FOXP2—in six different species. They found that it was one of the most stable genes they had ever studied; from mice to rhesus macaques to chimps, the protein produced by the gene is almost exactly identical, suggesting that the gene itself plays a fundamental role in animal function. But in humans the gene had undergone a slight modification. About 250,000 years ago, according to the scientists' calculations, two of the molecular units in the 715-unit DNA sequence of the gene abruptly changed. That's not long before modern humans first appeared in the fossil record. Could the changes in FOXP2 have enabled modern humans to speak? And could articulate speech have given modern humans an edge over the Neanderthals and other archaic humans?
“That's certainly what some newspaper stories implied, labeling FOXP2 a "language gene." But Paabo and other scientists are more cautious. FOXP2 "is one of who knows how many genes that affect language ability," says Ken Weiss, an expert on evolution and genetics at Pennsylvania State University. The change in FOXP2 might have been entirely coincidental. Or the gene may be related to language indirectly—for example, by influencing coordination. And some scientists argue that language evolved much earlier than our version of FOXP2, and that archaic humans also had speech....”
(Smithsonian magazine)
***
“As usual, Cheney's remarks reinforce mistaken notions about terrorism. He suggests to the bomber forces that only taking the fight to terrorists can turn the tide.
“Cheney doesn't talk about stealing the audience from terrorists or robbing from them the ability to exploit grievances that many in the Middle East feel.” (Steve Clemons)
***
"Many of the governments here in South America are now made up of people who were thrown in prison and tortured in the past, so they're taking a very different look at the role of their armed forces and their military relations with the United States."
(Lisa Sullivan, Caracas-based organizer for SOA [School of the Americas] Watch)
***
"Look at the JLA; They all map on the chakras. Batman is a human being of ultimate power [and intention.] Flash is communication. Superman is about giving selflessly. He represents the sun. He is that thing that loves us unconditionally. ,,, Batman is like Christ harrowing Hell, because only he can withstand it. He endures everything for us. Batman is a character who was almost brought to the brink of his destruction, but who persevered. Batman is our shadow and we have to look at the shadow and integrate the shadow. ... Mr. Miracle [an escape artist who survived a Dickensinian childhood on a Hell planet] is the transcendent character, the seventh Chakra.”
(Grant Morrison)
***
“In the 1970s form began to be considered uncool. It represented the rigid establishment. So everything started to become vague and mushy.”
(John Kricfalusi)
***
“I remember when the famous phrase "Live from Studio 60, it's Friday Night In Hollywood!" used to mean something. Back then, when the show first came out, I'd stay home every Monday night just to make sure I didn't miss an episode. There was such a buzz around the show in the weeks leading up to its premiere because it was something new, something no one had ever seen before. But ever since Judd Hirsch left, * the show's totally gone downhill.” (Review by “Artie Mayer” in The Onion)
[* NOTE: Judd Hirsch’s character only appeared in the first five minutes of the show.]
***
"I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time." (Orson Welles)
***
“There are two very separate worlds: the marketplace, and the bustling bazaar that is my brain. The brain place is crowded with goods, ideas, sequels, spinoffs, animated versions, miniseries, radio dramas -- this is just the used goods. All the new wares are in there as well and it's deafening. Once I create a verse I never let go of it. And figuring out how much of my energy should be devoted to reawakening the projects you all love with the actors and characters I all love, and how much should be forging ahead and creating entirely new works (which you are contractually obligated to love) is exhausting. More than you know. You know the horse caught bwtween two pools of water? Add seven pools, and make the horse wicked A.D.D. The other world, the marketplace, I don't even begin to understand or predict.” (Joss Whedon)
***
“By labeling concerns of American workers [regarding cheap labor from illegal immigrants] “nativism”, you dismiss those concerns as reactionary or invalid. Characterizing those concerns as racist or xenophobic allows you to ignore the economic impact on the working class... You are playing into the multinational corporations’ agenda. Way to go.”
(Les Reed, in a letter to The Nation 11/13/2006)
***
“If you’re talking about mugging little old ladies, you don’t say, ‘What’s our target for the rate of mugging little old ladies?’ You say, ‘Mugging little old ladies is bad, and we’re going to try to eliminate it.’ You recognize you might not be a hundred percent successful, but your goal is to eliminate the mugging of little old ladies. And I think we need to eventually come around to looking at carbon dioxide emissions the same way.” (Ken Caldeira, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose work for the Department of Energy showed an increasing acidification of the oceans.)
***
"...the big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart." ( Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
***
“... the very first example of congressional oversight in our history was an inquiry into President George Washington’s deployment of the military. In that case, a committee appointed by the House in 1792 was authorized to investigate the disastrous defeat the year before of Gen. Arthur St. Clair by Indians in the Ohio Territory, with the power to issue subpoenas for “persons, papers and records as may be necessary to assist their inquiries.” (Stanley Brand
***
“.... One day, Tomasello and Paabo were talking in the institute's cafeteria about a family in England with a remarkable genetic defect. Some members of the family have a mutation in a gene known as FOXP2, which helps direct the development of the brain during infancy and childhood. Every family member with the mutation had great difficulty speaking. Paabo had been thinking about how to identify genes that had changed during human evolution to make speech possible, and FOXP2 seemed like a prime candidate. He and his co-workers sequenced the gene—that is, they figured out the order of the DNA bases that make up FOXP2—in six different species. They found that it was one of the most stable genes they had ever studied; from mice to rhesus macaques to chimps, the protein produced by the gene is almost exactly identical, suggesting that the gene itself plays a fundamental role in animal function. But in humans the gene had undergone a slight modification. About 250,000 years ago, according to the scientists' calculations, two of the molecular units in the 715-unit DNA sequence of the gene abruptly changed. That's not long before modern humans first appeared in the fossil record. Could the changes in FOXP2 have enabled modern humans to speak? And could articulate speech have given modern humans an edge over the Neanderthals and other archaic humans?
“That's certainly what some newspaper stories implied, labeling FOXP2 a "language gene." But Paabo and other scientists are more cautious. FOXP2 "is one of who knows how many genes that affect language ability," says Ken Weiss, an expert on evolution and genetics at Pennsylvania State University. The change in FOXP2 might have been entirely coincidental. Or the gene may be related to language indirectly—for example, by influencing coordination. And some scientists argue that language evolved much earlier than our version of FOXP2, and that archaic humans also had speech....”
(Smithsonian magazine)
***
“As usual, Cheney's remarks reinforce mistaken notions about terrorism. He suggests to the bomber forces that only taking the fight to terrorists can turn the tide.
“Cheney doesn't talk about stealing the audience from terrorists or robbing from them the ability to exploit grievances that many in the Middle East feel.” (Steve Clemons)
***
"Many of the governments here in South America are now made up of people who were thrown in prison and tortured in the past, so they're taking a very different look at the role of their armed forces and their military relations with the United States."
(Lisa Sullivan, Caracas-based organizer for SOA [School of the Americas] Watch)
***
"Look at the JLA; They all map on the chakras. Batman is a human being of ultimate power [and intention.] Flash is communication. Superman is about giving selflessly. He represents the sun. He is that thing that loves us unconditionally. ,,, Batman is like Christ harrowing Hell, because only he can withstand it. He endures everything for us. Batman is a character who was almost brought to the brink of his destruction, but who persevered. Batman is our shadow and we have to look at the shadow and integrate the shadow. ... Mr. Miracle [an escape artist who survived a Dickensinian childhood on a Hell planet] is the transcendent character, the seventh Chakra.”(Grant Morrison)
***
“In the 1970s form began to be considered uncool. It represented the rigid establishment. So everything started to become vague and mushy.”
(John Kricfalusi)
***
“I remember when the famous phrase "Live from Studio 60, it's Friday Night In Hollywood!" used to mean something. Back then, when the show first came out, I'd stay home every Monday night just to make sure I didn't miss an episode. There was such a buzz around the show in the weeks leading up to its premiere because it was something new, something no one had ever seen before. But ever since Judd Hirsch left, * the show's totally gone downhill.” (Review by “Artie Mayer” in The Onion)
[* NOTE: Judd Hirsch’s character only appeared in the first five minutes of the show.]
***
"I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time." (Orson Welles)
***
“There are two very separate worlds: the marketplace, and the bustling bazaar that is my brain. The brain place is crowded with goods, ideas, sequels, spinoffs, animated versions, miniseries, radio dramas -- this is just the used goods. All the new wares are in there as well and it's deafening. Once I create a verse I never let go of it. And figuring out how much of my energy should be devoted to reawakening the projects you all love with the actors and characters I all love, and how much should be forging ahead and creating entirely new works (which you are contractually obligated to love) is exhausting. More than you know. You know the horse caught bwtween two pools of water? Add seven pools, and make the horse wicked A.D.D. The other world, the marketplace, I don't even begin to understand or predict.” (Joss Whedon)
***
“By labeling concerns of American workers [regarding cheap labor from illegal immigrants] “nativism”, you dismiss those concerns as reactionary or invalid. Characterizing those concerns as racist or xenophobic allows you to ignore the economic impact on the working class... You are playing into the multinational corporations’ agenda. Way to go.”
(Les Reed, in a letter to The Nation 11/13/2006)
***
“If you’re talking about mugging little old ladies, you don’t say, ‘What’s our target for the rate of mugging little old ladies?’ You say, ‘Mugging little old ladies is bad, and we’re going to try to eliminate it.’ You recognize you might not be a hundred percent successful, but your goal is to eliminate the mugging of little old ladies. And I think we need to eventually come around to looking at carbon dioxide emissions the same way.” (Ken Caldeira, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose work for the Department of Energy showed an increasing acidification of the oceans.)
"LET US TEACH DENNIS HASTERT THE MEANING OF FEAR..."
Okay, I used to feel sorry for Dennis Hastert, becoming Speaker of the House on the heels of a couple of REAL assholes.. but now he SO dearly needs to have his ass kicked from here to Sunday. This is me, advocating violence against a duly elected representative of the hapless people of Illinois. 
Getting in Hastert's personal space for just one good John Ford movie punch on the sweet spot would be worth going to jail, if only to let that hypocritical bastard feel for just... one... MOMENT the fear felt by true sons of the Constitution and the rest of the freedom loving world ever since the 2000 coup in Florida.
Are you having fun, now, Dennis? We've all had time to think about it and read the investigative journalism, and it WAS a coup, and the Constitution IS under attack. Forget about the Supreme Court rush job by the undearly departed Chief Justice and Sandra Day O'Connor's morning after remorse, forget about Florida and Ohio's Secretaries of State...
Let's remember that riot, and the physical coercion of vote tabulators by Republican staffers flown in from Washington. Remember that, Dennis? Remember the 2004 highjinks in Ohio, where the Democratic districts suffered a mysterious shortage of voting machines, and university students had an EIGHT HOUR WAIT TO VOTE? Since then, we've had suspension of habeas corpus, harassment of dissidents, a pre-emptive invasion, at least 50,000 little kids and grandmas dead by violence and a billion dollar war that has doubled the number of terrorists gunning for American innocents... and NOW you speak up, now that the jackboot is getting mud on the carpet of the office next door? NOW you decided to speak up, you Fat Fuck?
It's like that scene in "DieHard" when one of the bad guys lands with a !Crumpf! on the hood of the cop car. Now imagine Dennis Hastert in the role of the drowsy cop. Imagine the ACLU as Bruce Willis, looking down from the window and yelling to Hastert: "WELCOME TO THE PARTY, PAL!!!"
Now that the royalist presidency is permitting search and seizure of congressional offices, Dennis Hastert has suddenly discovered that there's a Constitution, and something called Separation of Powers...? MotherFUCKER. No, too harsh. His own mother's womb is embarassed to have given birth to an equivocating traitor to the ideals of the United States.
Okay, I won't hit him with my fist. Besides, if men really struck each other like they do in a John Ford comedy, they'd break their hands and walk around whimpering for a week. But I'm gardening today, and there's a big heavy bag of cow flop out by the road with Hastert's name on it, and if the son of a bitch comes within 100 feet of my furious digging, the Speaker of the House is going to wind up smelling like the BULLSHIT that he's been eating with a spoon like it was sugar for Lo These Many Months.
Hey, yesterday I intimidated a comic book geek in a "Sin City" shirt who was complaining loudly in the bookstore about "Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's diDACtic lectures against [snide voice] 'cruelty to animals.'" Guess I'm on a roll. It's not that I've suddenly become an advocate for bullying the complacent-- I've spent my life in satyagraha-esque spiritual struggle AGAINST bullies. But in both these cases-- Dennis Hastert learning his civics lesson too late, and the comic book geek who didn't mind seeing someone ELSE suffer-- we have individuals who have always jested at scars because they never felt a wound, who have failed to develop empathy until they themselves were on the receiving end of a threat.
Ain't It Funny how the comic book geek and his pal quickly backpedaled and allowed as how they were VERY against animal cruelty, and how the brave little Pirate (a character in Morrison and Quitely's book) deserved a better fate, Yessir they were just on their way to send money to the Humane Society. All I did was move very close to them and ask, "What's... wrong... with... Being... Kind.. to Bunnies?" in my best imitation of a tyrannosaur idly chewing on a piece of sheet metal.
And Ain't It Funny how fast these congressmen have discovered the rights of the accused, now that THEY'RE the ones threatened with Guilt by Accusation???
Better late than never? I hope they choke on Alberto Gonzales's mealy-mouthed smile.
Getting in Hastert's personal space for just one good John Ford movie punch on the sweet spot would be worth going to jail, if only to let that hypocritical bastard feel for just... one... MOMENT the fear felt by true sons of the Constitution and the rest of the freedom loving world ever since the 2000 coup in Florida. Are you having fun, now, Dennis? We've all had time to think about it and read the investigative journalism, and it WAS a coup, and the Constitution IS under attack. Forget about the Supreme Court rush job by the undearly departed Chief Justice and Sandra Day O'Connor's morning after remorse, forget about Florida and Ohio's Secretaries of State...
Let's remember that riot, and the physical coercion of vote tabulators by Republican staffers flown in from Washington. Remember that, Dennis? Remember the 2004 highjinks in Ohio, where the Democratic districts suffered a mysterious shortage of voting machines, and university students had an EIGHT HOUR WAIT TO VOTE? Since then, we've had suspension of habeas corpus, harassment of dissidents, a pre-emptive invasion, at least 50,000 little kids and grandmas dead by violence and a billion dollar war that has doubled the number of terrorists gunning for American innocents... and NOW you speak up, now that the jackboot is getting mud on the carpet of the office next door? NOW you decided to speak up, you Fat Fuck?It's like that scene in "DieHard" when one of the bad guys lands with a !Crumpf! on the hood of the cop car. Now imagine Dennis Hastert in the role of the drowsy cop. Imagine the ACLU as Bruce Willis, looking down from the window and yelling to Hastert: "WELCOME TO THE PARTY, PAL!!!"
Now that the royalist presidency is permitting search and seizure of congressional offices, Dennis Hastert has suddenly discovered that there's a Constitution, and something called Separation of Powers...? MotherFUCKER. No, too harsh. His own mother's womb is embarassed to have given birth to an equivocating traitor to the ideals of the United States.
Okay, I won't hit him with my fist. Besides, if men really struck each other like they do in a John Ford comedy, they'd break their hands and walk around whimpering for a week. But I'm gardening today, and there's a big heavy bag of cow flop out by the road with Hastert's name on it, and if the son of a bitch comes within 100 feet of my furious digging, the Speaker of the House is going to wind up smelling like the BULLSHIT that he's been eating with a spoon like it was sugar for Lo These Many Months.
Hey, yesterday I intimidated a comic book geek in a "Sin City" shirt who was complaining loudly in the bookstore about "Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's diDACtic lectures against [snide voice] 'cruelty to animals.'" Guess I'm on a roll. It's not that I've suddenly become an advocate for bullying the complacent-- I've spent my life in satyagraha-esque spiritual struggle AGAINST bullies. But in both these cases-- Dennis Hastert learning his civics lesson too late, and the comic book geek who didn't mind seeing someone ELSE suffer-- we have individuals who have always jested at scars because they never felt a wound, who have failed to develop empathy until they themselves were on the receiving end of a threat.
Ain't It Funny how the comic book geek and his pal quickly backpedaled and allowed as how they were VERY against animal cruelty, and how the brave little Pirate (a character in Morrison and Quitely's book) deserved a better fate, Yessir they were just on their way to send money to the Humane Society. All I did was move very close to them and ask, "What's... wrong... with... Being... Kind.. to Bunnies?" in my best imitation of a tyrannosaur idly chewing on a piece of sheet metal.
And Ain't It Funny how fast these congressmen have discovered the rights of the accused, now that THEY'RE the ones threatened with Guilt by Accusation???
Better late than never? I hope they choke on Alberto Gonzales's mealy-mouthed smile.
Art by Frank Quitely
From left to right: Death, Destiny, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Delirium and Despair, the cast of Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" series as drawn by the artist Frank Quitely. I first saw Quitely's work on "New X-Men", where bless him, he took most of the cast off steroids,
made Scott "Slim" Summers again, and gave Emma Frost the cheekbones of my 7th grade English teacher, Mrs. Anderson. 
Quitely's art and Grant Morrison's script for the anti-vivisection story "We3" was so wrenching that I had to keep it from my friends. It is correctly described as a 'heartbreaking adventure', and I still can't forgive Morrison for the brave death of Pirate-- doubly painful for those of us who know how aggressive and plucky a rabbit can be-- can he not be saved? All this is to lead you art junkies to Drawn: the Illustration Blog, from there to Horhaus and a podcast of an interview with Frank Quitely at his studio in Glasgow.
Friendly shop talk for working artists and a Glaswegian accent for everyone else.See also "Signifying Monkey" (anti-cruelty story), Fantasy Artists, Children of Fortune, Bill Griffith et alia
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