Thursday, August 19, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
The Authority, Book 4: Transfer of Power by Mark Millar, Tom Peyer, et al
Rating - 4: worth reading multiple times (buy it
) (but see below)
I am in the uncomfortable position of giving a book my highest rating then telling you not to read it. On the one hand, this book executes a vision and a sense of life brilliantly, in both the details and the bigger picture. For the right audience, these story arcs are masterpieces. On the other hand, it is the comic book equivalent of cutting yourself, and no one should embrace or encourage that sense of life. It is utter debasement that is horrifying in its mix of dwelling in sadism and unreflective acceptance. I do not see how it works for an existing The Authority audience, who presumably joined under Warren Ellis's radically different themes, which presumably contributed to why the series was canceled immediately after this.
This fourth collection of The Authority collects the last two story arcs (eight issues) of the original series. As the cover shows, the big news is The New Authority, a replacement team of Authority knock-offs who are bound to the status quo that the original Authority worked to reform. By what bloody means does this transition take place, and who is this new team, friendlier on the surface but darker within?
The opening paragraph hit my two major points: very well done; why would you do this? This is the opposite of the first volume, taking us from Jenny Sparks's ideal vision and instead wallowing in the destruction of potential. It is dashing human aspiration in favor of pointless cruelty. It is the triumph of hate, in tiers as levels of vindictiveness succeed each other.
The New Authority is very well designed in its similarity and contrast with the original. You can look at each member and see his/her model, but you immediately get the sense of "not quite right." For good or ill, there did not seem to be enough time to develop all the characters, so half of them are exceedingly shallow, some hardly getting a full character trait (Machine, Street). The "ill" is how poorly the characters are developed; the "good" is that it would be more debasing to spend even more time with these people.
The Colonel gets the most characterization. He is a slave, eager to please its master while afraid of being kicked, rejoicing in its power over others and indulging in the carnal pleasures it fears will be taken from it. He is a sadist and a coward and is so beaten down that, given the reins of ultimate power, he could not dream bigger than further entrenching the established powers. He sets the tone for the comic under his leadership the way that Jenny Sparks did under hers.
I am torn on whether the other characterization is poor or if they are just that lousy of people. Probably both, with a bit more of the latter. Teuton is a caricature, Last Call is a more extreme inverse caricature. Rush had a few hints that were interesting enough to make me want more. She was her own sort of inversion, and I think that worked better when it was kept subtle rather than being made explicit towards the end. It was a bonus if you watched the art, and she had expressions other than inchoate rage. Loving The Engineer as I do, I was hoping for more from The Machine or much of anything.
The Retread storyline has too short a time once it comes into its own. As seems appropriate for that dimension, it is a series of swift reversals. A cycle of hatred and vengeance culminates in a sort of reset button. I want to say that it is not a good payout for the storyline, but given the arcs' theme of reinforcing the status quo, it seems entirely appropriate.
Should we contemplate for a moment the resurrection of Jenny Sparks and the implications of what went on around that lamp? No, let us walk away merely noting that much can be said about the transformations going on there.
Particularly from the perspectives of the ones going through them, which leads me to the explicitly debasing part of the series, in which torments are visited upon the original Authority. Each gets his own version, but you will notice that Shen and Angie get much the same treatment. It is probably a blessing that their treatment is passed over far too quickly. Contemplating that one would take the series's darkness beyond black.
The villains disagree about whether the abuse is for the evulz. It pretty clearly must be, even if some are in denial, because it cannot serve as an example for anyone, even the people experiencing it. The victim is mind-controlled and can become aware of what happened only if the control breaks, which is probably a very bad situation for the controllers; the victim is supposed to be dead, so you have limited chances to "make an example" except by showing it to selected targets as an explicit threat. If you want the victim to suffer, you need to leave him/her somehow aware of the debasement as it happens, as was done with Jack. But then, a recurring point is that the villains are thinking small.
If you really want a troubling evening, however, start thinking through what was going on with Angie and Shen. Seek counseling if that is not troubling.
The off-stage ending was a bit weak, as was the Krigstein appearance. Was that attack by future superheroes intended to be his, rather than just forgetting about that thread entirely? The New Authority fought it off well considering how much weaker than the original they appear to be. Considering how effective Midnighter was against them, the government-issue "heroes" were presumably intentionally weaker than the originals, and the ones with stolen powers never got a manual. Seriously, The Doctor can turn people into stone or flocks of birds, and he can commit genocide without breaking a sweat, but The Surgeon steals his powers and says he cannot take Midnighter? Seth's karmic fate was squicky, weak, and entirely inappropriate for re-establishing the "good guys" given the preceding paragraphs.
All I want to say about Seth is that he survived being crashed into a tank of anti-matter. That may strike you as a common comic book event, but consider for a moment a tank of positrons. Anti-matter and matter annihilate each other on contact, converting their entire mass into energy. That e=mc² equation? It applies fully here, so one gram of anti-matter yields about three Hiroshimas. Assuming that Seth has some kind of force field that kept him from becoming the matter half of that anti-matter reaction, he still survived however many kilograms worth of anti-matter detonating around him. I'm surprised the Carrier survived, maybe surprised the planet survived depending on how hefty those tanks are.
On another "thinking small" note, estimates of how much it would cost to produce one gram of anti-matter range from $25 billion to $100 quadrillion. (I'm pulling all these numbers from Wikipedia.) If the Carrier has just the six tanks shown in that frame, with one kilogram per tank, the fuel in that room is worth $150 trillion to $600 quintillion. We would need to think of new economies to make use of that kind of energy. Whatever else you might want from The Authority, even ignoring the value of a dimension-hopping city-sized vessel that enables teleportation as side-effect, that room is worth more. And The New Authority is told to look for fossil fuels in other dimensions. Those people are serious about maintaining the status quo.
The book is expertly done, but the villain protagonists are neither sympathetic nor charismatic, so there is not the drive to read about them. I am not sure if I will be carrying on with the series; the next volume or two seems to be what people think of as The Authority, a mix of darkness, power-tripping, and obscenity. There was supposed to be a Grant Morrison run in the future, but that seems to have gone only two issues.
Amazon link
) (but see below)I am in the uncomfortable position of giving a book my highest rating then telling you not to read it. On the one hand, this book executes a vision and a sense of life brilliantly, in both the details and the bigger picture. For the right audience, these story arcs are masterpieces. On the other hand, it is the comic book equivalent of cutting yourself, and no one should embrace or encourage that sense of life. It is utter debasement that is horrifying in its mix of dwelling in sadism and unreflective acceptance. I do not see how it works for an existing The Authority audience, who presumably joined under Warren Ellis's radically different themes, which presumably contributed to why the series was canceled immediately after this.
This fourth collection of The Authority collects the last two story arcs (eight issues) of the original series. As the cover shows, the big news is The New Authority, a replacement team of Authority knock-offs who are bound to the status quo that the original Authority worked to reform. By what bloody means does this transition take place, and who is this new team, friendlier on the surface but darker within?
The opening paragraph hit my two major points: very well done; why would you do this? This is the opposite of the first volume, taking us from Jenny Sparks's ideal vision and instead wallowing in the destruction of potential. It is dashing human aspiration in favor of pointless cruelty. It is the triumph of hate, in tiers as levels of vindictiveness succeed each other.
The New Authority is very well designed in its similarity and contrast with the original. You can look at each member and see his/her model, but you immediately get the sense of "not quite right." For good or ill, there did not seem to be enough time to develop all the characters, so half of them are exceedingly shallow, some hardly getting a full character trait (Machine, Street). The "ill" is how poorly the characters are developed; the "good" is that it would be more debasing to spend even more time with these people.
The Colonel gets the most characterization. He is a slave, eager to please its master while afraid of being kicked, rejoicing in its power over others and indulging in the carnal pleasures it fears will be taken from it. He is a sadist and a coward and is so beaten down that, given the reins of ultimate power, he could not dream bigger than further entrenching the established powers. He sets the tone for the comic under his leadership the way that Jenny Sparks did under hers.
I am torn on whether the other characterization is poor or if they are just that lousy of people. Probably both, with a bit more of the latter. Teuton is a caricature, Last Call is a more extreme inverse caricature. Rush had a few hints that were interesting enough to make me want more. She was her own sort of inversion, and I think that worked better when it was kept subtle rather than being made explicit towards the end. It was a bonus if you watched the art, and she had expressions other than inchoate rage. Loving The Engineer as I do, I was hoping for more from The Machine or much of anything.
The Retread storyline has too short a time once it comes into its own. As seems appropriate for that dimension, it is a series of swift reversals. A cycle of hatred and vengeance culminates in a sort of reset button. I want to say that it is not a good payout for the storyline, but given the arcs' theme of reinforcing the status quo, it seems entirely appropriate.
Should we contemplate for a moment the resurrection of Jenny Sparks and the implications of what went on around that lamp? No, let us walk away merely noting that much can be said about the transformations going on there.
Particularly from the perspectives of the ones going through them, which leads me to the explicitly debasing part of the series, in which torments are visited upon the original Authority. Each gets his own version, but you will notice that Shen and Angie get much the same treatment. It is probably a blessing that their treatment is passed over far too quickly. Contemplating that one would take the series's darkness beyond black.
The villains disagree about whether the abuse is for the evulz. It pretty clearly must be, even if some are in denial, because it cannot serve as an example for anyone, even the people experiencing it. The victim is mind-controlled and can become aware of what happened only if the control breaks, which is probably a very bad situation for the controllers; the victim is supposed to be dead, so you have limited chances to "make an example" except by showing it to selected targets as an explicit threat. If you want the victim to suffer, you need to leave him/her somehow aware of the debasement as it happens, as was done with Jack. But then, a recurring point is that the villains are thinking small.
If you really want a troubling evening, however, start thinking through what was going on with Angie and Shen. Seek counseling if that is not troubling.
The off-stage ending was a bit weak, as was the Krigstein appearance. Was that attack by future superheroes intended to be his, rather than just forgetting about that thread entirely? The New Authority fought it off well considering how much weaker than the original they appear to be. Considering how effective Midnighter was against them, the government-issue "heroes" were presumably intentionally weaker than the originals, and the ones with stolen powers never got a manual. Seriously, The Doctor can turn people into stone or flocks of birds, and he can commit genocide without breaking a sweat, but The Surgeon steals his powers and says he cannot take Midnighter? Seth's karmic fate was squicky, weak, and entirely inappropriate for re-establishing the "good guys" given the preceding paragraphs.
All I want to say about Seth is that he survived being crashed into a tank of anti-matter. That may strike you as a common comic book event, but consider for a moment a tank of positrons. Anti-matter and matter annihilate each other on contact, converting their entire mass into energy. That e=mc² equation? It applies fully here, so one gram of anti-matter yields about three Hiroshimas. Assuming that Seth has some kind of force field that kept him from becoming the matter half of that anti-matter reaction, he still survived however many kilograms worth of anti-matter detonating around him. I'm surprised the Carrier survived, maybe surprised the planet survived depending on how hefty those tanks are.
On another "thinking small" note, estimates of how much it would cost to produce one gram of anti-matter range from $25 billion to $100 quadrillion. (I'm pulling all these numbers from Wikipedia.) If the Carrier has just the six tanks shown in that frame, with one kilogram per tank, the fuel in that room is worth $150 trillion to $600 quintillion. We would need to think of new economies to make use of that kind of energy. Whatever else you might want from The Authority, even ignoring the value of a dimension-hopping city-sized vessel that enables teleportation as side-effect, that room is worth more. And The New Authority is told to look for fossil fuels in other dimensions. Those people are serious about maintaining the status quo.
The book is expertly done, but the villain protagonists are neither sympathetic nor charismatic, so there is not the drive to read about them. I am not sure if I will be carrying on with the series; the next volume or two seems to be what people think of as The Authority, a mix of darkness, power-tripping, and obscenity. There was supposed to be a Grant Morrison run in the future, but that seems to have gone only two issues.
Amazon link
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
Rating - 4: worth reading multiple times (buy it
)
We have had The Authority as a recent series, a re-interpretation of the classic superhero team (mostly DC's JLA). This has similarities, but it focuses on individuals and is in novel form.
This is a superhero story about two outsiders. Doctor Impossible is a mad genius, fighting for world dominance and losing, but this could be the doomsday device that works. Fatale is a new member of theJustice League Champions, which reformed when Superman CoreFire disappeared and Lex Luthor Doctor Impossible broke out of prison. Doctor Impossible struggles with the world but mostly with his own feelings of inadequacy and social exclusion: the world's smartest man is still that high school nerd surrounded by jocks. Fatale has her own inadequacies as the new kid amongst a bunch of demigods, someone who was reconstructed with powers after life's disappointments almost ended in a horrific crash.
Tropers will love this novel. It knows all the conventions of the comic book world and alternates between deconstructing them and playing them straight.Batman Blackwolf is a billionaire genius in black; a master tactician, fighter, and inventor; and mildly autistic, hence the singular focus and deep analysis that puts his entire mind so effectively on a single subject. Wonder Woman Damsel is the alien princess who divorced Blackwolf as the original Champions fell apart. We get a mix of comic book "larger than life" and then reality ensues as people are popping pills, developing cancer from their powers, or aware that they are running around in brightly colored tights.
I am putting too much emphasis on the deconstruction. The book celebrates traditions even as it undermines them, and traditions are reconstructed. There are good reasons for capes and for villain team-ups. Magical and technological powers interact, well or not. Origin stories are key to understanding what makes characters tick.
And, as is appropriate, the origin stories are interlinked, with early implications that there are greater links and hidden mysteries to be revealed in the later chapters. Doctor Impossible says that he created CoreFire, his greatest nemesis. He also went to high school with several of the Champions. One begins to wonder if Fatale's background and shadowy funders will be tied in, because how perfect would it be if Fatale is wearing Blackwolf's technology or Doctor Impossible's?
Doctor Impossible's recurring background story and motivation is high school trauma, transitioning to college trauma, transitioning to acting out on a global scale. In the way that speculative fiction does, it distills many stories and motivations down to their core and then expands it dramatically. High school and superheroics are allegories for each other and for life more generally. Doctor Impossible gives us most of the setting background because he is obsessed with his past: who ignored him in high school, the obsessive research in college (yes, they called him mad at the academy), and the past battles and defeats.
A poignant emotional picture is looking at the lower tier of heroes and villains, mostly the villains, the ones just hanging on to the fringe of the scene. They are too proud or risk-seeking to be part of the mass of humanity, but they are devastatingly aware of how outclassed they are. Superhero stories told from the mere mortal perspective are one thing, in which the heroes are gods or forces of nature, but there is a distance there, a sense that you are looking into another world. Actually having superheroes and supervillains in your work life, where you are expected to face them even though they can literally kill you with their gaze, makes it far more personal, amazing, and horrifying. Doctor Impossible has very respectable powers but retains the shock of facing people who can throw cars and lightning bolts.
Fatale combines those a bit of the second tier with a bit of trauma, hers visible at a distance. She is constantly aware of how much of her is metal, constantly aware that she is a freak in normal society and a nobody in super society. She is on a team with the preeminent superheroes of the age, while the biggest pieces of her self image are (1) broken person, reconstructed with foreign matter; (2) fired government agent; (3) was even less before all that.
It is very much a human drama, with spectacle to make it larger than life. There are careers and couples, enemies and acquaintances. Some people were born lucky, others worked for everything, others have everything working against them, and everyone is suffering in his or her own way if only you could see it. Fatale's perspective is good for that; she is seeing the celebrity superheroes from behind the veil, where you can see past Richard Cory's glitter. She is the least oblivious to everyone else's suffering, so while Doctor Impossible is giving us background, she is giving us insight.
One detail I am very fond of is that Doctor Impossible has "malign hypercognition disorder." He is an evil genius. Is it just an American tendency that we must medicalize everything, give it a name and a diagnosis and some extra syllables? Like the fellow who thought he was just really anxious until he was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder. Oh, there are pills for that.
The continuing high school drama can be a bit much, but it is the heart of Doctor Impossible's character. He is haunted, tormented. No one ever appreciated him, but he shall have his due. When in his villain persona, he likes to shout about how he is a man of Science! and otherwise driven by the compulsions of being a mad supervillain, which he ponders upon occasion. He knows his limitations and actually has a solid grip on reality, but he is driven to pit himself against the world and lose.
We see the spectacle and the self-doubt in a big fight. Both sides' perspectives are that they lost. Doctor Impossible was hit in the face a bunch of times and had to run away. The Champions hit him in the face a bunch of times but he still got away. Life is hard, especially on a global stage.
I like the characterization, but we do not have much in the way of character growth or change. There is a bit, but the cast is as static as the comic book characters that need to keep selling issues on the same shtick ten years from now. They get their moments in the sun, but they mostly remain who they were. We spend so much time learning who all these people are and were that we never get to see them develop further. We get a lot of origin stories.
As is often the case, the ending is the weakest part. The book is 90-95% great, but the climax is followed by an anti-climax and an unsatisfying denouement. Some pieces are introduced or explained a little too late, and some bits are tied off rather than wrapped up. The anti-climax and the denouement are both entirely appropriate for the genre and the characters, but they are not a great pay-off for the build-up.
There are editing errors. Charles Stross explains how these things creep in, but it feels odd when you see the characters say something wrong, not in-character ignorance but likely something left from an earlier draft. For example, Fatale refers to surprising Doctor Impossible at a funeral, which mixes two events. Maybe that fight happened in an earlier draft. There are not many typos, but you notice them in a professional publication.
To end on a positive note, the internal continuity is great. It is something you might expect in a comic book, where items from past years and series are brought into the latest story, but it goes beyond that. You get a mix of Chevhov's Gun and foreshadowing and running jokes. At some point, you realize that something is being telegraphed, not mocked. And then Mr. Grossman brings the pieces together and makes them pay off.
Amazon link
)We have had The Authority as a recent series, a re-interpretation of the classic superhero team (mostly DC's JLA). This has similarities, but it focuses on individuals and is in novel form.
This is a superhero story about two outsiders. Doctor Impossible is a mad genius, fighting for world dominance and losing, but this could be the doomsday device that works. Fatale is a new member of the
Tropers will love this novel. It knows all the conventions of the comic book world and alternates between deconstructing them and playing them straight.
I am putting too much emphasis on the deconstruction. The book celebrates traditions even as it undermines them, and traditions are reconstructed. There are good reasons for capes and for villain team-ups. Magical and technological powers interact, well or not. Origin stories are key to understanding what makes characters tick.
And, as is appropriate, the origin stories are interlinked, with early implications that there are greater links and hidden mysteries to be revealed in the later chapters. Doctor Impossible says that he created CoreFire, his greatest nemesis. He also went to high school with several of the Champions. One begins to wonder if Fatale's background and shadowy funders will be tied in, because how perfect would it be if Fatale is wearing Blackwolf's technology or Doctor Impossible's?
Doctor Impossible's recurring background story and motivation is high school trauma, transitioning to college trauma, transitioning to acting out on a global scale. In the way that speculative fiction does, it distills many stories and motivations down to their core and then expands it dramatically. High school and superheroics are allegories for each other and for life more generally. Doctor Impossible gives us most of the setting background because he is obsessed with his past: who ignored him in high school, the obsessive research in college (yes, they called him mad at the academy), and the past battles and defeats.
A poignant emotional picture is looking at the lower tier of heroes and villains, mostly the villains, the ones just hanging on to the fringe of the scene. They are too proud or risk-seeking to be part of the mass of humanity, but they are devastatingly aware of how outclassed they are. Superhero stories told from the mere mortal perspective are one thing, in which the heroes are gods or forces of nature, but there is a distance there, a sense that you are looking into another world. Actually having superheroes and supervillains in your work life, where you are expected to face them even though they can literally kill you with their gaze, makes it far more personal, amazing, and horrifying. Doctor Impossible has very respectable powers but retains the shock of facing people who can throw cars and lightning bolts.
Fatale combines those a bit of the second tier with a bit of trauma, hers visible at a distance. She is constantly aware of how much of her is metal, constantly aware that she is a freak in normal society and a nobody in super society. She is on a team with the preeminent superheroes of the age, while the biggest pieces of her self image are (1) broken person, reconstructed with foreign matter; (2) fired government agent; (3) was even less before all that.
It is very much a human drama, with spectacle to make it larger than life. There are careers and couples, enemies and acquaintances. Some people were born lucky, others worked for everything, others have everything working against them, and everyone is suffering in his or her own way if only you could see it. Fatale's perspective is good for that; she is seeing the celebrity superheroes from behind the veil, where you can see past Richard Cory's glitter. She is the least oblivious to everyone else's suffering, so while Doctor Impossible is giving us background, she is giving us insight.
One detail I am very fond of is that Doctor Impossible has "malign hypercognition disorder." He is an evil genius. Is it just an American tendency that we must medicalize everything, give it a name and a diagnosis and some extra syllables? Like the fellow who thought he was just really anxious until he was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder. Oh, there are pills for that.
The continuing high school drama can be a bit much, but it is the heart of Doctor Impossible's character. He is haunted, tormented. No one ever appreciated him, but he shall have his due. When in his villain persona, he likes to shout about how he is a man of Science! and otherwise driven by the compulsions of being a mad supervillain, which he ponders upon occasion. He knows his limitations and actually has a solid grip on reality, but he is driven to pit himself against the world and lose.
We see the spectacle and the self-doubt in a big fight. Both sides' perspectives are that they lost. Doctor Impossible was hit in the face a bunch of times and had to run away. The Champions hit him in the face a bunch of times but he still got away. Life is hard, especially on a global stage.
I like the characterization, but we do not have much in the way of character growth or change. There is a bit, but the cast is as static as the comic book characters that need to keep selling issues on the same shtick ten years from now. They get their moments in the sun, but they mostly remain who they were. We spend so much time learning who all these people are and were that we never get to see them develop further. We get a lot of origin stories.
As is often the case, the ending is the weakest part. The book is 90-95% great, but the climax is followed by an anti-climax and an unsatisfying denouement. Some pieces are introduced or explained a little too late, and some bits are tied off rather than wrapped up. The anti-climax and the denouement are both entirely appropriate for the genre and the characters, but they are not a great pay-off for the build-up.
There are editing errors. Charles Stross explains how these things creep in, but it feels odd when you see the characters say something wrong, not in-character ignorance but likely something left from an earlier draft. For example, Fatale refers to surprising Doctor Impossible at a funeral, which mixes two events. Maybe that fight happened in an earlier draft. There are not many typos, but you notice them in a professional publication.
To end on a positive note, the internal continuity is great. It is something you might expect in a comic book, where items from past years and series are brought into the latest story, but it goes beyond that. You get a mix of Chevhov's Gun and foreshadowing and running jokes. At some point, you realize that something is being telegraphed, not mocked. And then Mr. Grossman brings the pieces together and makes them pay off.
Amazon link
Monday, August 09, 2010
Transmetropolitan, Volume 1: Back on the Street by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
Rating - 2: not worth reading (skip it)
It pains me to reject Warren Ellis, but I just don't hate everyone else (or myself) enough to really get behind Spider Jerusalem. It is a more colorful but even less hopeful take on cyberpunk.
This volume collects the first six issues of the comic series Transmetropolitan. Spider Jerusalem is Hunter S. Thompson in a cyberpunk setting. He is called out of retirement and back to The City, where he hates everyone and will bring Truth to their addled skulls.
If you're looking for a stylish version of chanting "hate hate hate hate hate," not quite AM or Kefka style, this does it pretty well. The glimmers of hope are mostly strangled, though, and it does not suggest any direction beyond a series of rants.
The first six issues are mostly episodic. I am told that the second year of the series kicks off a long storyline, so maybe it is just being episodic while establishing the setting and characters. We get a Two Minutes' Hate on each issue's theme of the month. Rants cover trendy social movements and iconoclasm, authoritarianism, government, mass media, and religion.
Basically, Spider Jerusalem is a horrible, depraved person using truth as a weapon against more horrible, depraved hypocrites. It is black-and-gray morality, suitable for cyberpunk but very vivid. Spider takes refuge in audacity: cursing up a storm, blowing up buildings, getting his way by punching and shouting, and wielding a bowel disruptor. He chain-smokes between doses of uppers, spends issues nude or in stolen towels, and has a two-faced cat that also smokes and pees on things. It is unclear how often Spider excretes on things himself, since that is not in-frame.
In The City, the politicians are corrupt, the media is corrupt, the businesses are corrupt, you see the pattern here. People tend to be abusers or victims, vicious or apathetic. The setting is also wacky, with one group splicing themselves with alien DNA, several new religions appearing daily, and the ubiquitous three-eyed smiley face.
Spider's assistant is a breath of fresh air. She is a journalism student, former stripper and bodyguard. She seems still on the surface of the muck that Spider dwells in, or at least she is not showing the psychological scars. Of course, moderate that by the setting: her idealism and love come across through coarse discussions of sex and an unhealthy relationship. She is suitably cynical, just not yet fully jaded. She is also the sane one of the pair.
The other moments of light come from Spider's winning. He is insane, audacious, and hate-filled because he is an idealist, believing in capitalized Truth, and that the truth will set you free. And if that truth sets some people free from the tops of tall buildings, they deserved it. And it works; the truth is sufficiently ugly and shocking to pierce the public consciousness and affect the issue of the month. That month; there is no reason to think that things are getting better, or ever could, but there might be a win along the way.
This becomes problematic when placing them alongside each other. On one page, Spider is decrying oppressive violence, while he is taking a rocket launcher to an unsuspecting bar on another. He is a champion of the downtrodden, when not also stepping on them and cursing their apathy and acceptance of their place at the bottom. Touching moments are alloyed with vomit, urine, and the phrase "balls deep." This could be used for an effectively jarring contrast, but here it is just discordant. Spider Jerusalem can be awesome, but he is not a serious person, so he cannot effectively deliver the moral of the story. Such as it is.
The art is wonderful. It is stylish, richly detailed, and perfectly complementary to the text. At times, it could bear a bit more of the story's weight, but Spider loves the sound of his own voice. Costuming is excellent, and it looks like the artist had fun with the assistant's outfits. The backgrounds are very busy and full of details. Ebola cola!
As a detail, I appreciate that the rocket launcher blew out the passenger window while being fired out the driver's window. That's why it doesn't have recoil, folks. Maybe it should have taken out car in the process, but if we accept the bowel-disrupting gun, I'll accept the relatively mild recoil adjustment.
For a bit of trippiness, Patrick Stewart reportedly wanted to produce a live version and offered to voice an audio version. Patrick Stewart plays a cyberpunk Hunter S. Thompson: can you dig it?
Amazon link
It pains me to reject Warren Ellis, but I just don't hate everyone else (or myself) enough to really get behind Spider Jerusalem. It is a more colorful but even less hopeful take on cyberpunk.
This volume collects the first six issues of the comic series Transmetropolitan. Spider Jerusalem is Hunter S. Thompson in a cyberpunk setting. He is called out of retirement and back to The City, where he hates everyone and will bring Truth to their addled skulls.
If you're looking for a stylish version of chanting "hate hate hate hate hate," not quite AM or Kefka style, this does it pretty well. The glimmers of hope are mostly strangled, though, and it does not suggest any direction beyond a series of rants.
The first six issues are mostly episodic. I am told that the second year of the series kicks off a long storyline, so maybe it is just being episodic while establishing the setting and characters. We get a Two Minutes' Hate on each issue's theme of the month. Rants cover trendy social movements and iconoclasm, authoritarianism, government, mass media, and religion.
Basically, Spider Jerusalem is a horrible, depraved person using truth as a weapon against more horrible, depraved hypocrites. It is black-and-gray morality, suitable for cyberpunk but very vivid. Spider takes refuge in audacity: cursing up a storm, blowing up buildings, getting his way by punching and shouting, and wielding a bowel disruptor. He chain-smokes between doses of uppers, spends issues nude or in stolen towels, and has a two-faced cat that also smokes and pees on things. It is unclear how often Spider excretes on things himself, since that is not in-frame.
In The City, the politicians are corrupt, the media is corrupt, the businesses are corrupt, you see the pattern here. People tend to be abusers or victims, vicious or apathetic. The setting is also wacky, with one group splicing themselves with alien DNA, several new religions appearing daily, and the ubiquitous three-eyed smiley face.
Spider's assistant is a breath of fresh air. She is a journalism student, former stripper and bodyguard. She seems still on the surface of the muck that Spider dwells in, or at least she is not showing the psychological scars. Of course, moderate that by the setting: her idealism and love come across through coarse discussions of sex and an unhealthy relationship. She is suitably cynical, just not yet fully jaded. She is also the sane one of the pair.
The other moments of light come from Spider's winning. He is insane, audacious, and hate-filled because he is an idealist, believing in capitalized Truth, and that the truth will set you free. And if that truth sets some people free from the tops of tall buildings, they deserved it. And it works; the truth is sufficiently ugly and shocking to pierce the public consciousness and affect the issue of the month. That month; there is no reason to think that things are getting better, or ever could, but there might be a win along the way.
This becomes problematic when placing them alongside each other. On one page, Spider is decrying oppressive violence, while he is taking a rocket launcher to an unsuspecting bar on another. He is a champion of the downtrodden, when not also stepping on them and cursing their apathy and acceptance of their place at the bottom. Touching moments are alloyed with vomit, urine, and the phrase "balls deep." This could be used for an effectively jarring contrast, but here it is just discordant. Spider Jerusalem can be awesome, but he is not a serious person, so he cannot effectively deliver the moral of the story. Such as it is.
The art is wonderful. It is stylish, richly detailed, and perfectly complementary to the text. At times, it could bear a bit more of the story's weight, but Spider loves the sound of his own voice. Costuming is excellent, and it looks like the artist had fun with the assistant's outfits. The backgrounds are very busy and full of details. Ebola cola!
As a detail, I appreciate that the rocket launcher blew out the passenger window while being fired out the driver's window. That's why it doesn't have recoil, folks. Maybe it should have taken out car in the process, but if we accept the bowel-disrupting gun, I'll accept the relatively mild recoil adjustment.
For a bit of trippiness, Patrick Stewart reportedly wanted to produce a live version and offered to voice an audio version. Patrick Stewart plays a cyberpunk Hunter S. Thompson: can you dig it?
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