Do Not Siege Walled Cities - 229
State of the World Address
STATE OF MY COMICS
Good morning, all. Hope this finds you well. It’s starting to heat up in Australia and which means I’m emerging from my hole and enjoying the outdoors. Or, my idea of the outdoors, which is the dog beach.
Wanted to share a page from LEADED GASOLINE with you. Lorenzo is putting a lotta black on these pages, which is exactly what we wanted for our moody slasher crime story. I am VERY excited to see how it prints. Will either be a perfect marriage of content and medium, or a very angry call to the printer.
Here’s a related thought, now that I’m staring at the page: We kill a lotta innocent young women in this book. And they are based on real people. I looked at all their pictures and read as much (which is not much) as there is on each woman’s life.
It’s a cold and violent world we’re depicting. I imagine someone, somewhere will have a problem with some of our choices. But, and here’s the takeaway, if you don’t involve yourself in the the nonsense, you get far less splash damage from bullshit. Avoid and ignore weirdos who wanna fight in comics, and you can make what you want, unmolested.
THE STATE OF CRITICISM
The review above is for a crime comic trade paperback I was thinking about purchasing. I want you to read it again and then consider that the ONLY difference between this person and an official ‘critic’ is a $19 GoDaddy hosting expense.
Not enough of the haircut this guy wanted. Bad book.
THE STATE OF COMIC WRITING
Writer-activist Ibram X. Kendi had a bad week, as his Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Research is laying off staff and battling allegations of mismanagement. Trust me, I will tie this back to comics.
I don’t know how I arrived at academic Youtube, but I’ve spent the last week there. And the response to Kendi’s downfall is bordering on jubilation. Maybe the schadenfreude from intellectuals is petty and fueled by jealousy, but the major charge they level at him isn’t about the center itself. Rather, they cannot get over how lightweight his academic CV is. They say he does not engage in actual research of any type and offers no novel theories on the paper-thin research he does.
The anger that black intellectuals in particular feel towards Kendi is, they say, motivated by a simple truth:
This man lowered the standard his predecessors had worked hard to vault above.
I thought this was an interesting place for the academics to arrive. I’ve see them snipe at each other over ideas in the past, but I never see them bluntly state “this person is not on my level.” They say it loudly about Kendi.
That idea, the lowering of standards and the outcome of it, is something that nags at me. For years I’ve been the crank arguing that the hire of a non-comic writer to write comics is as offensive as the hiring of a non-comic artist. It’s a ludicrous proposition that assumes because someone can type, they can write. Or because they can write a grocery list, they can write comics. It’s particularly aggravating because, right or wrong, writers have been the sales driver in comics the past decade. So not only is it an insult to craft to hire non-comic writers, it also runs counter to the market.
Lately the idea has expanded for me. It’s not merely non-comics writers I want out. It’s anyone we all understand to be a fraud.
There has always been bad comic books. There have always been editors unwilling to do their jobs. You could cherrypick a dozen books from any era and hold them up as examples of terrible work. But there’s something acute about our moment. It feels worse. And that’s because even filtering for the weird personal or political grievances some fans have aimed at creators the past few years, there’s still a ton of egregiously bad writers in the market.
The standard has been lowered. Readers have jumped ship. And the ones who remain are conditioned to tolerate dog shit, depressing the market further with every terrible book that hits shelves. We’re falling down the stairs to a damp basement that smells like an animal died behind the water heater.
The standard must be raised before we’re no longer art. “Anyone can write a comic book.” Well, that’s been proven. Can anyone write a good comic book? Clearly not. Now it’s time to hire brains. Even if the standard rises above what I’m capable of and outmodes me, I’ll be ecstatic.
STATE OF ZZZZZZ
In some respects it's unfair to call any theme tired, because there's always someone still excited for it. But periodically themes get beat into the ground. And 'trauma' is the most beat in the present moment.
Is anyone else just over this?
I had a video game job where I a was tasked with writing a tacky The Road or The Last Of Us style ‘dad and kid, alone in a harsh world’ story. I asked the developer why this theme was so pervasive at that time. His response? “We’re all guys in our 30s-40s who work long hours that keep us away from family, and maybe as a result we fantasize about being important to our children.”
Goddamn. Go home, fellas. Work nights at Applebee’s instead of this.
Same applies to trauma. I’m certain there’s a reason every 30-year-old is writing about trauma (one would assume the rise of therapy culture and social media has something to do with it) but… who cares? It’s spent. If trauma is everywhere, as is aways the suggestion, then it loses some narrative punch, doesn’t it? If every character is the sum of their traumas, rather than, say, their aspirations, then stories can only head in one direction.
I really cannot wait for whatever the next fad is.
STATE OF ACTION FILMS WITH FEMALE LEADS
I rewatched Leon: The Professional the other day. It’s a bad good movie. Really does some action bits perfectly, is masterfully directed, and attempts a real story. However, the story is, of course, stupid. Action just is. Elevate it all you want through presentation, but ‘action’ is just dumb by nature.
That said, I enjoyed the movie as I have for 30 years. And I fell down a Luc Besson hole. Which is a weird hole, as his personal history has its share of… well, it’s just a weird hole.
And in my scurry through the gopher tunnels of Besson’s filmography, I came across a movie nobody cares about. Columbiana.
It’s is a modified sequel of a sort. It’s the reworked script for Mathilda, the continuation of Leon: The Professional. But because they couldn’t get that film made, they chopped up the screenplay, changed setting and ethnicities, and crapped this thing out instead. It’s not terrible, but it also just does not hit. Just, whatever. Not elevated. Not lowbrow. Just a mediocre action movie.
And then I read about it. No idea why. And I watched it. Mostly because I was fascinated that it was remade, unofficially, by a production house in Bangladesh. That film went on to be a huge success in that market. It’s called Agnee, and while it is the same story, it’s weird that they should even feel compelled to admit to stealing. Because the themes and the beats are so stock that they pretty much belong to humanity at this point. We’re talking every imaginable trope and cliche. Action Movie, the Movie.
Here’s Agnee, in all it’s glory. I’ve never been to Bangladesh so maybe there’s an element I don’t understand, but it’s odd that some characters fall in and out of speaking english. Also, I got this from Internet Archive and it is unavailable anywhere in the west for rental or purchase. So I THINK I’m good to upload, but if I’m violating display laws feel free to call law enforcement.
Here’s the production house responsible for Agnee. I found the ‘Controversies’ section a standout collection of words.
Jaaz Multimedia's chairman Aziz has been a fugitive since 2019, when the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Department of the National Board of Revenue accused him of money laundering.[4] During his rule, he threatened Dhallywood star Shakib Khan to kill. Shakib filed a case against five people including assistant director and Jaaz's then CEO Shish Monowar.[7] Shish Manwar, the then CEO of Jaaz Multimedia, has been arrested over a case filled for kidnapping one of its staff on 2014.[15]
Anyway, Agnee and Columbiana and every and all bad female-lead action movies are of interest to me. I basically wrote one for Maurizio Rosenzweig in the pages of IMAGE! 30th ANNIVERSARY and it’s something I’d love to see done well, either in print or on screen. Columbiana didn’t do it for me. Agnee is definitely interesting, but mostly because I have so little contact with Bangladeshi media. I’ll have to keep looking.
STATE OF MEDIA BIAS
Most of my audience is in the US and would find Australian politics rather niche. But indulge me for a minute while I use it as a jumping off point for a talk on media literacy.
Australia is facing a referendum. The proposed change is an advisory body representing Australia’s indigenous people to parliament. They’re calling it the Voice. A Yes would add this to the constitution. A No would maintain the status quo.
The details obviously matter and up to yesterday, I hadn’t actually been able to work through those. Because every time I tried to learn about the referendum, I found myself in deeply partisan media that was essentially telling me how to think and (theoretically) vote. And, not coincidentally, everyone I’d speak to here had no idea how to express either argument. They all confessed to just not knowing much about it.
So I was grateful to trip over this episode of an American podcast with an Australian guest. That Australian works in public broadcasting and cannot express his voting preferences publicly. As a result, when asked to talk about it- he succinctly steelmans the arguments of both sides. And for the first time in the months I’ve tried to learn about it, I felt like I had SOME basic understanding.
I just wanted to share this because it’s what normal people want. Well-adjusted non-weirdos would like information. We don’t want confirmation without consideration or bitter arguments for no reason. Allow me the facts and I’ll work through my position using my values as the guidepost.
I’d like to have a taste of this in the US.
The conversation regarding the Voice takes place 43min into the podcast.
STATE OF EGRESS
So that’s it for me. Hope everyone has a productive and fulfilling week. I am convinced there are good things coming. Do for self.