Do Not Siege Walled Cities - 289

The Rizzless State Of Comics

Jan 02, 2025

FROM JAKARTA

I’m emailing you from the second-largest city on the planet, Jakarta. I can’t say I’ve learned a lot about the city on this visit. It’s unfriendly as hell to pedestrians, so my usual tactic of walking around until my feet fall off isn’t applicable. Maybe by next week I’ll have more to say on it.

I’m listening to the call to prayer from my hotel room. I’ve overeaten. About to finish a movie that feels like Flashdance but for strippers. It’s a relaxed evening. Hope you had a good New Years.

THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL SAUCE IMPROVES

The above image is me striking comic creators (self-flagellation included) until they make creative choices with an ounce of rizz. Aesthetic value, we’ll say. Style points.

Here’s an example, inspired by the John Woo movies I’ve watched this week.

The gun below is among the most popular in the United States. It’s reliable, affordable, and carries a lotta bullets. If you’ve got a friend who owns a firearm exclusively for home defense, there’s an excellent chance it’s the Glock pictured below.

And maybe for that reason, it’s a handgun creators often default to in comic books. A logical choice, after all.

But also a hideous one. It’s two fucking rectangles. Looks like a child’s drawing of a gun.

Conversely, the Beretta below is slightly outmoded in 2024 but looks goddamn awesome.

I’m not a gun guy. The realities of these devices doesn’t factor in. One looks elegant and aesthetic, while the other looks like toy blocks in a gun shape. For defending your family, perhaps the practical choice wins out. But ‘practical’ is a slur in visual mediums like comic books.

Now look this thing. It’s a specialty firearm meant to fire silent ammunition. It’s intended for spies and secret police.

It’s supremely impractical for most every other purpose. Your effective range is anemic and it only holds five rounds. Unless you’re an assassin, you’re better off going with virtually any other handgun.

But it looks cool as hell. Put it in your comic book.

Sometimes there’s too much sauce. And this thing is proof.

That’s a Russian revolver that never went into production, but was designed and prototyped. Apparently it was meant for the American market, but a treaty meant it couldn’t be sold to the US by Russians. Now it only exists in video games, where the fact it looks like the platonic ideal of ‘gun’ is an asset.

You see what I’m driving at here, right? Rule of cool. LIE to the uninformed 99% and ignore the pedantic 1% who would “well, actually” you into poverty. The overwhelming majority of people don’t know which gun a supercop or hired killer should carry. SO PICK THE COOL ONE. Law of high school applies. Better to be cool than educated.

We’ve all read something where we were better informed on a subject than the author. And we were taken out of the work. But, who cares? Who are you writing for? The audience, or the technical advisor?

MEDIA CONSUMPTION

While I enjoyed Face/Off as much as anyone, the Hollywood films of John Woo never drove me to the foreign section of the video store for his catalog.

What a fool I’ve been.

I’m learning there is no higher sauce-factor Woo’s Hong Kong films. Focused, almost western-ish, dare I say ‘masculine’, interpersonal dramas paced against the most perfect action sequences put to film. Really just the right amount of too much.

What a line to toe. If you go too hard, you create farce and then because you’re working in a genre you arrive at parody. And that sucks. That’s for directors afraid to BE the thing. See: Luc Besson’s peak vs Luc Besson’s nadir. Woo has bodies flying, but never tips into goofy. That’s the real craft on display.

A Better Tomorrow is the better film, but The Killer is more fun.

Now, the counterpoint. What if you tell a schlocky tropey story with zero swag? You might arrive at Blue Tiger levels of planned irrelevance.

Unlike the Woo films, this bore never commits. It wants too badly to be a serious genre picture, and instead provides nothing to latch onto. This is a lesson. And I take it seriously, because I know I’ve risked the same pitfall in my own career. You can’t be self-serious at the expense of being entertaining. Who gives a fuck that your cliched crime story is well-written? A lotta those in the world. Better it should fail on occasion but be memorable.

Moving on. Sometimes a setting is the movie. Albino, which has like three different names across territories and re-releases, etc, is filled with fun performances. But the real appeal is the place.

When the grizzled rancher says he made a life outta the dirt, you believe it. And his commitment to a land he stole and really does not want him, is likewise believable. Albino is an exploitation movie. It’s got a dead wife, a cop/soldier seeking revenge, and an over-the-top cult-leader villain. You’ve seen it before. But the details push it over, and the result has some high points.

Continuing with the idea that execution is the value of a thing, we’ve got Phantasm II. It explains nothing. It takes an hour for anything to happen. And it feels more like a long episode of television than a film.

But, I enjoyed every minute.

Imagine a child wrote a movie. But that child was the most gifted autistic in the county. Phantasm II attempts to ‘Aliens’ the franchise by upping the action. Is it successful? Well, no. Not at what it sets out for. But it is fun and never drags.

Here’s a rare thing, a novel in the media consumption log. This one has taken me a year to read, as I only pick it up when I’m in Southeast Asia.

I really got a lot outta The Quiet American. The prose is withering in that specifically British way. The conflict is believable and cynical. And the resolution is quaint in the best possible fashion.

I will read more Greene.

FOR NEW YEARS

This is a placeholder newsletter. A light edition. That’s because I know no one really reads anything this week, but I’ve got mental commitments. Next week, I’ll try to address a topic I think is central to the struggle creator-owned comics face in 2025. Even if it’s an age-old problem.

Thank you for reading my words this year. I’ll soon ask you to pay for them in the form of a new series solicit from Image. When that drops, this newsletter will be pretty full-on in its efforts to sell that book. Hope you’re down for it.

Have a good few days. Get some rest. We’re doing 2025. Do for self.