Do Not Siege Walled Cities - 236
The Course Of Empire Again
HOPE YOU ENJOYED YOUR HOLIDAY
Whatever you celebrate or don’t, I hope you got something out of time with your family or dog.
I’m in a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving (aside from Norfolk Island, strangely) so it shoulda been an unremarkable Thursday. Instead, I was told to evacuate our home as it was in danger of being taken by a bushfire.
Felt altogether Australian. And it was fine. We stayed somewhere safe and watched Youtube. House didn’t burn down. Some people’s did though.
WHAT STAGE OF THE PAINTINGS ARE WE NOW?
I’m bringing back the paintings. Have we reached ‘Destruction’ yet?
It seems every week there’s a new voice from retail or the creator side (very rarely journalists) saying, “this is bad, fam.” And every week those people get dismissed as wrong-thinking troublemakers.
Now it is a fact that Infinite Chicken Littles don’t make the sky fall any faster. If we’re wrong, we’re wrong. Maybe there is no problem in comics. But I don’t think this is a hysteria. If there’s no trouble here, comics are doing a terrible job of convincing us of that.
The tl;dr of it is this: superhero comics suck right now. And it’s difficult to sell things that suck.
Now this has been the mating call of disgruntled fans for years, but it’s been verboten to say in the press (or trade magazine). It seems there’s a gag-order on comics news sites regarding the clear and unavoidable drop in quality. And that silence only makes things worse because it’s a nice meal for the readers who already assume the media is crooked. It’s really not a good long-term strategy to undermine your own credibility.
And, look, let’s just talk about the bigger problem with saying, “it’s the quality, stupid.”
The people who fucked it up can’t admit that without accepting blame.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that this falls on editorial. Ok. Well, people with mortgages can’t throw themselves on the sacrificial altar of Good Comics and say, “yes, I edited hundreds of terrible books. Which means I either didn’t know any better [that’s bad], or I knew better and didn’t care [even worse], or I was under a mandate from above [forbidden to express aloud].”
It’s a nonstarter. And I don’t imagine the real decision-makers are reading ICv2. And if they were what are the higher-ups supposed to do? Mass purge? You can’t do the Belko Experiment if everyone works from home.
I’m sure there’s some ‘the devil you know…’ thinking at work. If you get rid of the entire editorial but offer the same rate of pay for incoming hires… you’ve just kicked the can down the road.
And I haven’t even gotten to the creators yet. What would it mean to them if the unavoidable reality truly was “this shit just sucks, guys.” What are we supposed to do with a generation that up to this point hasn’t come anywhere near the creative heights of the previous one? Is there a culling of some sort?
I keep it light in this newsletter, but it’s not easy talking about peoples’ jobs. It’s a natural truth that some people in comics need to be relieved of their positions. But who do you wanna hear that from? Fans? “They’re never happy!” Other creators? “They’re jealous!” Retailers? “They are trapped in a time capsule and refuse to push the new books!”
There’s always a reason to not look in the mirror. And there’s always someone to dismiss.
I’m afraid we’re trapped in a holding pattern until someone above the above notices what’s going on down here. And then I fear anyone who IS doing the right things will get thrown out with the bathwater.
Not a great situation.
COINCIDENCE
Just a thought to hold in your head for a second. Not sure if there’s properly a point.
As we stood in the front yard of the house we sheltered at and listened to propane tanks explode and watch the fire occasionally shoot high enough to see over the houses, we saw something odd.
A meteorite flew across the sky. With a vibrant green tail.
Because we were in a remarkable situation with the fire, we assumed this thing we just witnessed must be fire-related. “An ember?” or maybe “a piece of a propane tank?” People had theories, and none of them were the obvious “it’s a meteorite, duh.”
When you’re in the middle of something, you think that the world is in the middle of something.
In terms of storytelling, this is the type of thing most of us are scared to do. Coincidences are haram. It’s considered hacky to pile happenstance onto circumstance the characters brought on themselves. But, sometimes life is just that. Things happening without regard for other things. A roulette wheel hitting the same number three times.
YOUTUBE ITUBE WE ALLTUBE
It seems Youtube will be the next Substack for creators, in the respect we’ll all be on there tryna maintain audiences. The difference, I think is the discovery factor on Youtube is significantly higher than any other platform. Someone may actually get turned onto our work there. That’s promising.
But what isn’t so nice is actually doing videos. I’ve got ideas to last few a couple months and I’m sure I’ll have to revise old videos during that time (I’ve already been chastised for not being clear in one video) so I’ll stay busy. But it’s quite difficult looking at a camera and talking in any way that stays germane or even interesting.
That said, I accept the challenge. I don’t have any fire and brimstone in me, so I can’t imagine I’ll be a destination channel for the angry masses. And I feel pretentious giving advice. But I will do my best to be honest, so perhaps that’ll capture a few imaginations.
Here’s some videos from this week. Forgive the thumbnails, it’s part of the ritual.
MEDIA CONSUMPTION FOR THIS WEEK
I’ll be back next week with more LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT, and pretty soon I’d like to talk about the INHUMANS book that couldn’t be made in 2023, but for today I’ll just share some films that have made an impression (or not) in the past 7 days. I think both provide talking points for comic craft.
The Killer is a breezy, unimportant genre work that looks better, is better acted, and is in every way more interesting than it should be.
It is literally and figuratively ‘Netflix content.’ The story is not a story, but an anecdote. The character is really stretching the Man With No Name archetype to breaking. And the whole thing feels like a genre exercise rather than a burning passion.
But it was high-quality. And never boring. A stylish little thing that deserves to exist on those merits alone.
Assassin messes up. Wants revenge/to clean up his mess/etc. It’s so familiar that it’s both the keystone and completely not worth mentioning. And it’s about nothing. I saw some very desperate film student lecturing online about how the film is about the failing of capitalism and the gig economy. If it is, it’s a failure of a film. There is nothing there. It’s merely a great way to spend 2hrs. And I wish that was enough for these fake deep wannabe twitter directors. Let Fincher make a easy-to-watch genre movie. No need to ascribe it intent or value it never approximates.
Next up, a legitimately bad movie that is also a great use of your two hours. Saltburn is being dismissed by some as the first TikTok film. It’s essentially a meme factory meant to inspire a generation who sees subtext everywhere and rejects context wherever it appears.
Everything about the feel of the movie, from the arbitrary aspect ratio choice to the “Here’s How to Get a Cinematic Look for Your Youtube Videos” aesthetic, just sucks. Unlike The Killer, there’s no craft to elevate the thing (outside some strong performances). The misdirect the film labors under stands up to no level of scrutiny and when it steps aside we’re left with a movie we’ve seen several times before. [Also there’s some weird anachronisms I speculate were done intentionally to further memeify the thing.]
So, not great.
BUT, what makes it more than worthwhile is that it went for it. There’s shock-value intended-to-offend moments throughout and it is ultimately an edgier artifact of the 2020s (or would this be retrospecting the 2010s technically?) than we’ve gotten thus far. It’s tawdry garbage that thrills at showing you a penis.
And in 2023, that’s the most I can hope for.
Is it properly transgressive? No. C’mon. But it’s DOING A THING AND COMMITTING. And that’s worthy of praise. In the same way The Killer doesn’t matter, this film doesn’t matter. And that’s fine.
Sometimes quotes are grating, because you can almost pinpoint the moment they made the public consciousness. It reveals how prone to parrot behavior we can be. One such quote is “Joe Rogan is a dumb person’s idea of a smart person.” I’ve heard this dozens of times. Very easy thing to say, apparently. And, look, it may be true. But it’s entirely too pat and digestible to be a belief anyone has actually examined. That said, I’ll borrow it for my own quotable here:
“Saltburn is a shallow person’s idea of a deep film.”
And that’s true. But you will not fall asleep during it. It is worth watching.
AND I’M OUT.
Fire didn’t stop me and neither will this newsletter. I’ve got work to do and it’s time I got back to it.
Hope you have a productive and rewarding week. Avoid fire. Do for self.
Love your commentary on The Killer. Yes it was stylishy more than substancy. Also required suspension of disbelief. And the guy who bought the hit seemed to be a sly beta-ish version of Tom Cruise’s Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder. A strong and creative application of stereotypes throughout and I didn’t see ‘failure of capitalism’ in there at all.
Also agree on YT discovery. Despite their overlord approach I can still find and see controversial counter-narrative content there and you’re smart to spend time creating there since it’s so long-tail.