DO NOT SIEGE WALLED CITIES - 258
Mother's Day 2: After Birth
HEY HOW ARE YOU?
Hope you had a strong week. And hope you’re having a blessed Mother’s Day. And if you hate your mom or didn’t have one, take yourself out to eat and walk your dog. No reason to be online.
I’m writing a horror story at the moment and motherhood is at the center of it. And it has me reflecting on the subject a lot. I am grateful to not have any hang-ups in this part of life. Nothing complicated about my relationship with my mother. Good woman. Good parent. Blessed. Thanks to her today.
FULL STEAM
Comic update: four issues of a book with Paul Tucker are in the can. Genuinely smart work from Paul abounds. Wallace blesses us with hand-lettering for our books and that process takes time, so we’ve got a little ways to go still. But if you enjoyed STRINGER, you will truly love this title.
Comic update two: a full issue of Ludo and I’s collaboration is done and it is really a thing to behold.
Somewhere between BESERK and Heart of Darkness, the story is now secondary to the beautiful art. Ludo hit it outta the park.
I want every book with my name on it to run like clockwork through every aspect of and possible hiccup within production and publication. And when my partners and I are confident we’re safe and strong: it’s a full push. Coming soon.
A Quick Word(s)
Here’s Garth Ennis nailing the embrace/repel nature of dialogue, as part of the larger topic of style. If Youtube did its job, this link should start on him talking about it. But should it have failed me, the part I’m referring to begins at 36min in.
I’ve said many times that there’s a current dialogue sensibility I cannot make sense of. An autistic friend has told me the aspects I’m pushed away by actually reads true to him because many in his circle are autistic and there’s a different cadence. So there’s an element of ‘different strokes for different folks’ here. But I’d be curious to hear if it goes the other way. Does someone who is autistic and has many autistic friends not register neurotypical dialogue as believable? I think it may be better to default to the mean here.
Much like Ennis, I’ll put a book down at the first symptoms of a tin ear. And I’ll throw it across the room if I feel like the dialogue assumes I can’t read or retain information.
Style may really be all we have. It’s up for debate if every story has been told, but what’s inarguable is that an old story told with flair is new enough for us all. Put some style on it, people.
WE GOT’M!
Stevel Albini died.
I’d been wishing him death for a couple years now.
I should explain. I don’t actually want anyone to die, including truly bad people. And Albini wasn’t even that. He was just a sad old man who had done great things and now had to apologize for his amazing life for the rest of his life. Because he made committed the capital crime of being edgy and provocative 40 YEARS AGO.
For people who don’t know, the man was a brilliant musician and pioneering audio engineer. In the later role, he’s responsible for many albums you own and a number of all-time classics. But he was an overconfident nerd, and a lot comes with that. An earned/unearned sense of superiority and, with that, righteousness.
So he spent most of his life poking the bear.
He often tilted from acerbic into cruel and was always given a pass because he was a genius. Also, anyone with a brain understood he was doing a bit. He may’ve believed the things he was saying, but he said in with the *style* he did because it made for good reading or good listening. He was an artist and entertainer. Hyperbole and willingness to overstep are requisite.
He got a slap to the face in the 2010s when a little post about a festival shuttle ride with Tyler the Creator was read in a different spirit than he was used to. Gone was the “we get what he’s saying though” he got in the 80s and 90s. It was replaced with “fuck this foul racist.”
And somewhere around that time, his brain broke. In the same way Howard Chaykin will seemingly never recover from his assumed ‘team’ turning on him in comics, Albini was likewise damaged by how his fellow travelers in music. Because when you see yourself as a [insert point on political axis here] in good standing and then have that assumption rocked by rejection, you freak the fuck out. Maybe this was accelerated by the political climate. Or perhaps he was mainstream-news-radicalized in the way many of our parents have been by a hatred of Trump. I couldn’t say.
Albini spent the last 5 years of his life as the ‘edgy’ version of the typical cosmopolitan boomer. A “in this house we believe…” yard sign given life. Platitudes and familiar talking points. The forgive me tour. The renunciation of his past self and denunciation of anyone who still connected with it.
It was all very pathetic to witness. Not quite hostage video. More like a half-hearted cultist who needs a place to live. And I’d joked for the past few years it would be better to see him dead.
Should that bother you, I’ll ask you to remember who you are defending. A lifelong ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’ rhetorical assassin. Anything I can say about him would be minor compared to what he aimed at peers and colleagues. Simply put, any eulogy that does NOT include a vicious takedown of the man is not remotely in the spirit of the man. You can read his writing as cruel or you can read it as an invitation to spar, but you can’t pretend he didn’t delight in a withering remark.
I hated the final version of himself not for changing his mind, but for the blinding lack of self-awareness or grace. Though, really, that last bit is my fault. He never extended ANYONE grace, at any step in his life.
Larry Flynt had a seemingly pathological distaste for hypocrites. It felt like a fixation. The anti-gay politician who has bathroom trysts. The preacher who schlups the grieving widow. He saw the world in an almost Ditkoesque Liars/Truthtellers binary.
That’s how I feel about ladder-pullers. I have no patience for men who make their way in this world by doing X and then tell you X is wrong when they ‘come to Jesus.’ It’s revolting to me. If you feel that way, live that way. Don’t tell me you renounce, show me you cannot live with yourself. Give the money away. Change your name. Divest yourself of anything you’ve PROFITED OFF THE THING YOU NOW REJECT. And until you do so, do not dare look me in my eye and moralize. It’s worm behavior.
Sasha Baron Cohen telling the world race humor is wrong. I expect to see you handing your money to a collection plate, Ali G.
Albini was who he was in pop-culture because of who he spent his life as. He was entitled to change his mind, but he never earned the right to judge anyone else. He profited when it was profitable and he divested when the market turned. That’s not admirable, it’s malleable.
The people celebrating his final iteration are cultists. “He came to my way of thinking, so I think he is good” is the essence of religious thinking. It rejects a spectrum in favor of a binary. “Saved” and “sinner.” It assumes one’s soul must be claimed by the correct side of a moral war. It’s dogshit brain.
And it didn’t matter in the end. They still dug up his old writing and tried to paint him as a child pornographer. Because the apology circuit doesn’t matter to online ghouls. Their purpose is to feel superior to their superiors. Albini was a greater contributor to the world than any of his critics could attempt. But for one Twitter post a guy working stockroom at Bed, Bath & Beyond can suppose he is the moral better to a famous person.
I admire Albini. My thoughts are with anyone who loved him. But, let’s also be as plain in our assessment of him as he would be of us. RIP.
“IT’S LIKE PLANETARY WITHOUT… YOU KNOW…
My thoughts on how schizophrenic the comics business is about Warren Ellis.
And, bonus, my thoughts on why manga is bending us over.
THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME
Was thankful to be a guest on the How’d We Get Here!? Podcast. We talked comics, clearly. A pleasure to chat it up.
https://www.youtube.com/live/ds6zrdAIDkg?si=rJ1LzDNazSwU2aNP
Not sure why it won’t auto-populate the video in my browser, but here’s hoping that link looks like the other videos in this when I hit publish. If not, just copy and paste. It was a fun time.
MEDIA CONSUMPTION
La Femme Nikita is a movie I’d been aware of for 20 years and somehow never watched. Or at least did not remember. Luc Besson has far more misses than hits, but when he’s in his wheelhouse he’s usually making good use of it.
The film is a cliche, but that’s acceptable to me. “We’ll give you a new life… one where you’ve gotta kill for us” government agency man says to hopeless convict. That type of thing. Fine. Just make it sing.
And Besson mostly does. Here’s where you know you’re watching an auteur, though perhaps one with a very average IQ: there’s a scene where a man puts together a room service order. And we watch him do it in real time. Guy Richie would’ve hard cut to a closeup of orange juice being squeezed, then cut to coffee being poured, then the tray being pulled off screen. Besson just makes us watch. Is it any better than how Richie would do it? Yeah, for this movie. But it’s not about ‘better’ it’s just about the fact when you watch it you realize choices are being made.
I also enjoyed how nihilistic the film’s tone is. Lots of frustration and crying and ugly behavior. Which I don’t care for in real life, but do enjoy in my girl-with-gun action film.
THAT’S A WEEK
Have a good one. Try to get something done. You’ll feel better. Do for self.
