When I wanted to stop with the Man-Thing blogging, Tucker was all like, “oh no, we can’t give up, we have to finish it.” So what does he do for his final installment?
Put it on 45 so we can shamble to it.
Monthly Archives: June 2009
Monkey, dig your grave
Having grown accustomed to his freedom in The Jungle, the “humanized” chimp needed too much supervision and went berserk when he was put in his cage. … When Jerry became more and more impossible, Dutton took Jerry into a nearby orange grove and gave him a shovel. “I had him dig a deep hole,” Dutton said. “When he was finished, I told him to jump inside. Then a policeman friend shot him in the head.”
“Dutton” is Jack Dutton, described as an “eccentric millionaire and showman.” He built up a private menagerie, then put it on display as an Anaheim tourist attraction called The Jungle. Jerry the chimp was the attraction’s top-billed star, “The World’s Most Human Chimpanzee.”
Dutton and his wife had taken Jerry from the jungle, the real jungle, and “raised him as their child,” says my source, the fine coffee-table book Southern California in the ’50s (compiled and written by Charles Phoenix, designed by Kathy Kikkert). The book continues: “Within a few months he was toilet trained, sat at the dinner table, dressed himself … Locals, tourists, schoolchildren and church groups enjoyed Jerry’s antics as he played with Sunny the bear or swam with the ducks in the pond.”
But in just a few years, everything fell apart. Disneyland opened, neighbors sued because they thought the animals were dangerous, Dutton’s wife eloped with his lawyer. And Jerry fritzed out. Dutton had to hire people to look after Jerry around the clock. Then he tried giving Jerry away to zoos — no good.
Then the shovel, the grave. The single bullet. The role for Bill Murray if some indy wiseacre makes this business into a film. (I see Murray in shorts and safari jacket, bush cap riding the back of his head, the strap under his chin, his face puckering as the tears squeeze out.)
Thanks to The Inkwell Collector for recommending Southern California in the ’50s.
Bound to Blog: Wonder Woman #10
Wonder Woman #9 was a high point for both Marston’s script and Peter’s art. After that, #10 is a bit of a let-down. Not that it’s bad; it’s just, comparatively (and comparatively only) kind of tame. This issue the enemy is the Saturnians who (surprise!) keep lots of slaves and fly back and forth from their planet to ours tying people up and then letting them escape and being tied up themselves and…well, you ge the idea.
Here’s the cover:
That’s a pretty great drawing. In general, Peter’s best moment in this issue involve those trippy, computer-graphics-looking pathways made out of circles. The Saturnians have decided that the best way to invade earth is to build a giant bridge out of space debris stretching all the way between the two planets. I”m pretty sure that you’d have to run into some structural problems there…but of course, I don’t wear skintight green jumpsuits either. Just goes to show whose an advanced interplanetary genius and who isn’t I guess….
You’ve got to love that in that second one they appear to be moving those space-rocks with a toy crane.
Anyway, as I said, the intricacies of the plot aren’t especially revelatory this go round. There were a bunch of moments that made me laugh, though. First is this:
That cracked me up. Diana is worried about going swimming with the Holiday girls because if she’s wearing a swimsuit, they’ll recognize her as Wonder Woman! Obviously, that’s a pretty logical concern…but that’s just why it’s funny. I mean, she’s only wearing glasses; how hard would it be to recognize her anyway?
This got me too:
His name is Mephisto Saturno. Gee, I wonder if he’s a bad guy from the planet Saturn? I guess no one will recognize him as long as he doesn’t dress in a bathing suit though.
Looking at this panel, I was reminded of Man-Thing (if you can believe that). Me and Tucker Stone have been blogging our way through the first Man-Thing essential volume. Writer Steve Gerber names his villainous evil developer F.A. Schist, which I think is both dumb and irritating. Yet, I find Mephisto Saturno charming. I was trying to figure out why that would be; why does one goofy, over-determined name make me groan, while the other makes me giggle?
I think part of it has to do with the language itself; F.A. Schist is awkward; it’s actually even difficult to pronounce. Whereas Mephisto Saturno bounces right off the tongue; it’s almost like something out of a children’s book. Come to think of it, Marston has a real affinity for nonsense language in general. Wonder Woman #9 had goofy cave man speak, and this issue has a bunch of gibberish nonsense code (in the upper right panel)
I was going to say that this is one of the few Marston ticks that I can’t really link up to any of his fetishes…but now that I think about it, I wonder. I’ve just started Les Daniels book about WW, and it talked about some of Marston’s experiments with sorority girls. Apparently, he attended a sorority ritual known as the:
“baby party”, a strange sorority ritual in which freshman initiates “were required to dress like babies.” They were also bound, blindfoded and prodded with sticks, when they resisted, wrestling ensued. Four pages of charts documented the responses of the young scholars to these activities, with Marston concluding that “the strongest and most pleasant captivation emotions were experienced during a struggle with girls who were trying to escape from their captivity.”
Who experienced those pleasant emotions again? Anyway, the point is that baby talk as a prelude to some bondage play may well have pushed some of Marston’s buttons.
Back to F.A. Schist vs. Mephisto Saturno, though. Besides the fact that the second name is more fun to say than the first, it’s also just less heavy-handed. Calling a developer a fascist is the dumbest kind of knee-jerk clichéd liberal insult. It’s bone-headed and obvious. Whereas Mephisto Saturno is just silly. Marston does have a lot of political axes to grind, and he grinds them assiduously and openly…but not oppressively. Part of it is that his ideas are nutty enough that when he lays them out there, you (or at least I) tend to laugh rather than groan. Also, I think he’s actually just more subtle than Gerber is:
Steve’s thinking how great it would be if WW stayed homed and cooked for him…but I don’t think the reader is supposed to think that’s great. In fact, later in the comic, Steve gets punished for wanting to make WW his domestic by being turned into a (sexualized) domestic himself —and significantly, he’s prattling on about food here, too:
I’m not sure the point here is exactly that Steve shouldn’t have wished servility on WW, incidentally; rather, it seems more like Marston is asying that it’s sexy to have everyone, man or woman, in a position of servility.
Along those lines, I thought this page was interesting:
Despite the claims of someas we see here, Steve doesn’t always get rescued. On the contrary, in this scene, he and WW rescue each other. It’s true that overall, WW is more likely to rescue Steve throughout the series than vice versa…but he’s hardly entirely helpless.
In fact, the more I read WW, the more the Steve-WW relationship comes across as…I don’t know if subtle is the word exactly. Vaguely viable, maybe? I was just thinking about it in relation to the Wonder Woman animated film, which also has Steve mouth obnoxious misogynist canards at points, and treats him as a somewhat equal partner in kicking ass. But the animated film is shot through with anxiety; Steve and WW have lots of dramatic tension around Steve’s issues with letting WW go into danger and his need to in general force WW to admit that men are really okay too. Whereas, in this version, when Steve talks about keeping WW out of danger, it’s more an exasperated aside than a real argument. And then there’s this:
I guess that could be seen as a misogynist diss in some sense. But it really comes across more as friendly flirtation than as an actual effort to run WW down. Especially given this:
I think he’s bragging about her there; he’s saying. The point isn’t that she did all this amazing stuff, but she’s still a silly little woman, but that despite all of this amazing stuff she did and all the danger she was in, she wasn’t perturbed…and also wasn’t unfeminine. I think that’s really the point; Marston likes femininity, so pointing out WW’s femininity can be teasingly affectionate; it’s banter, not an insult. Whereas the animated DVD was a lot less comfortable with femininity, and so many of Steve’s chauvinistic comments came across not as teasing or as friendly banter, but as anxious and mean-spirited — if I remember correctly, there’s a moment of borderline workplace harassment.
It’s also worth pointing out this sequence:
That’s from WW #2, and it’s almost an exact reversal of the scenes we just looked at; in this case, WW is teasing Steve for behaving just like a man even though he’s been captured and endangered on another planet (Mars in this case.)
All right, to finish up with the boots:
Nobody’s going to notice her running around in a gaudy swimsuit…but not wearing boots! Everybody will point and stare at her then!
_______________
I just looked ahead, and after this mild downturn, #11 features a cross-dressing hypnotist. So I’m looking forward to that.
Golden Age Gallery: Schomburg Thursday
Presenting the one-man canon: Alex Schomburg.
(Warning: third cover is racist.)
Gluey Tart: Is Disgruntled
Manhattan Love Story, by Momoko Tenzen
March 2009, Digital Manga Publishing
God of Dogs, by Satoru Ishihara
September 2008, Digital Manga Publishing
Romantic Illusions, by Reiichi Hiiro
September 2008, Digital Manga Publishing
Love Knot, by Hiroko Ishimaru
February 2009, Digital Manga Publishing
I don’t necessarily want to write about manga I dislike. This isn’t my naturally sunny disposition rearing its ugly head; I just don’t want to spend any more time with it than necessary. I read it, I failed to enjoy it, and the last thing I want to do is think about it for another thirty minutes. I’ve been on an unlucky streak, though, and decided I should share the pain – I mean, discuss what makes these yaoi titles the varying shades of bad that they are.
That reminds me of one of my favorite Edgar Allen Poe stories, “Berenice”:
“Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch – as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? – from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.“
So true, yes? “Berenice” kicks ass, by the way, because the protagonist (whose name is Egaeus, for heaven’s sake) disinters his lost love to remove her teeth. She might not have been dead when she was buried, either, but of course that’s a given.
I am obviously not holding any of these poor books up to the standard of “Berenice,” because in that context, most things come off pretty badly. The thing is, every time I pick up a yaoi manga, I’m hoping to fall in love. I’m hoping something will work for me and leave me with a happy, stupid-looking smile on my face. And I’m really pretty easy, too. I’m usually happy enough if the art is pretty, even if the story isn’t great. Conversely, if the story is nice, but the art isn’t ideal, that’s still OK. And even if the art and the story are both a bust, sometimes the mangaka will hit one of my kinks, and that’s enough for me, too. So a title really needs to succeed on only one of three levels for me to feel like I got something out of it.
Sadly, despite my low standards, I am still disappointed more often than not. Manhattan Love Story, for instance, just pissed me off. I’ve read worse, but that’s the only positive thing I’m prepared to say about it. Well, that, and I like the cover design. That’s what suckered me into this mess in the first place. Too bad I ordered in from Amazon and couldn’t turn it over to see the illustration on the back.
That would have sobered me right up. I intensely dislike gay stories in which one of the pretty boys looks and acts like a girl. The whole point of reading romance stories about men is that they’re about men. In the first story, the main character, Diamond, is having a discreet affair with his boss, Rock. I kid you not. Diamond and Rock. That could probably be funny, under other circumstances, but trust me when I tell you that these are not them. Diamond is a tiny, timid, uncertain little florist with ridiculous amounts of hair. Rock is a hugely successful captain of industry who appears regularly in magazines and, for reasons that are unclear to me, his important business ventures include the little flower shop where Diamond works. I could overlook all of this, I think, if a) there were anything to the story, and b) if Diamond didn’t look and act like a big bundle of annoying feminine stereotypes. He’s flushed, he’s flustered, he has some bizarre physical condition that causes him to become very ill if he works too hard. To which I roll my eyes and mutter profanity. Perhaps his condition is caused by the strain of growing all that hair.
There are a couple of other stories in this book, and poofy-haired, overly feminine uke syndrome does turn up again. (Uke = bottom; in yaoi, the bottom is often drawn smaller than the top, or seme.) In one particularly creepy instance, the syndrome manifests in the form of an angelic little cherub, who is named Raphael, for Christ’s sake, and also has too much hair and is drawn to look about 7 but is said to be 13 or so (I don’t remember, and I refuse to look it up).
Raphael sees his teacher having sex with one of his fellow students, and later, the teacher confesses his love for Raphael. To clarify, this is presented as cause for celebration rather than a call to the Department of Children and Family Services. This kind of thing is not unheard of in yaoi, but it’s a couple of bridges too far for me. There are other problems, too, but I’ve had enough. No mas. Let us never speak of this manga again.
God of Dogs is a disaster, but not a fluffy, weepy, eighth-grade-idea-of-romance disaster. A completely different kind of cock-up, as it were. I blame the cover for this one, too, but not just the cover. The description, which promised brutal Chinese mafia action and a mysterious stranger, pushed some buttons for me. Nice art, favored kink – as the big man said, two out of three? Ain’t bad. I thought I couldn’t loose.
The art is in fact pretty good. That isn’t always a given – the cover art is not necessarily representative of what’s inside the book. In this case, there’s no subtlety to the lines, and the faces look overly Neanderthal (I realize they’re supposed to be gangsters, but geez). But overall, it’s fine. I can appreciate the aesthetic beauty of the pretty boys, tough as they are. And as a bonus, there’s a body dissolving in lye or something in a bathtub, which is always a pleasant surprise.
You’re sensing a “but” in here somewhere, aren’t you? To paraphrase a personal hero of mine, “Everybody I know has a big but. What’s yours?” (That’s from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. It’s a classic.) Well, yes. The manga looks pretty good, and it’s about gangsters, BUT it doesn’t make any damned sense. There is sort of a plot, and yes, you can pick out some of the salient points thereof, but my brow was furrowed in the WTF position pretty much the whole time I read this book. Maybe I was trying to think too much about the details, but God of Dogs felt like a three-hour movie cut down to 90 minutes, and like maybe they went too deep and excised a certain amount of connective tissue along with extraneous dog reaction shots.
The back cover says:
“The notoriously vicious Chinese Mafia has lost its next rightful heir… to sudden suicide! Now, the esteemed “God of Dogs” Tsai family must race against the ticking clock and hunt down the child of the deceased eldest son in order to preserve their ancient, sacred legacy. Meanwhile, the mysterious Archer has been convicted of killing his father and is on his way to jail. What will fate reveal for the powerful Tsai clan’s criminal dynasty AND this strange young man?”
Your guess is as good as mine.
Next! Romantic Illusions is a cheerful screwball comedy-ish title that explores the humorous and, yes, romantic possibilities inherent in multiple personality disorder. How could you go wrong with that? Right? Yu, the main personality, is a mild-mannered florist. (There were florists in the first book, too. What’s the deal with all the florists?) His other two personalities are a rockin’ tattooed playboy and a brilliant young lawyer (who has brown hair, when the other two are blond, which is a pretty impressive trick, when you think about it). (The less dominant personality is drawn shorter in some panels, as well, which I also found disconcerting.) Yu created the other two personalities so someone would love him, and yes, Hiiro does, er, touch on the possibilities for, um, physical humor inherent in this situation. Not very well, but at least she reaches for it. (Ahem.)
Ultimately, each of the personalities ends up with a boyfriend of his own, one of them another person with multiple personality disorder. That should be pretty good – funny, sweet, kinky, perhaps slightly disturbing, but potentially in a good way – but it isn’t. It just kind of falls short. How is that even possible? I don’t know.
Which leads us nicely into Love Knot, which is made of meh. The art doesn’t thrill me, but it isn’t bad enough to actively annoy me, either. The story sounded like a good bet – Keigo, a detective by day/assassin by night (and I do love me an undercover assassin), takes in overly effeminate, on-the-run psychic Emiya and discovers that Emiya had been held against his will as part of a secret government project. Keigo falls in love with Emiya and vows to protect him always. Complications ensue, but they wind up in a happily-ever-after situation that includes Keigo discovering that Emiya’s long-lost mother is dead, yes, but always loved him. Aw.
There’s a little bit of heat between Keigo and Emiya, so I was moderately happy with that. And there’s a hint of darkness due to the assassin and repressive secret government project angles, but it isn’t played out, so no payoff there. I put the book down and said, “Well. That was deeply mediocre.” In retrospect, it was probably sub-mediocre.
I blame myself, really. It’s not like I didn’t have adequate warning. Upon reflection, I remember that Momoko Tenzen also wrote Paradise on the Hill. Oh, yeah. I didn’t like that, either. Satoru Ishihara wrote Dost Thou Know? and Hiroko Ishimaru wrote Total Surrender. Nope, didn’t like those, either. Too bad I can’t reliably access my vast database of disappointing manga. It all blurs together. (I wasn’t familiar with Reiichi Hiiro, so I’m giving myself a pass on that one.) I have to admit that I’m a bit worried about what I’m going to read next. Because this has just been disheartening. Still and all, you have to get right back up on the horse that threw you, right? Take the huge, towering stack of unread manga by the horns and all that. Or maybe I should reread a classic, just to restore my faith in manporn.
Grizzly Bear — Veckatimist
I’ve started writing short music reviews for the very kind folks at Metropulse. My first one is of the new Grizzly Bear album Veckatimist. Plus I get to natter on about the Carpenters. So check it out.
Review of Ariel Schrag’s Likewise
By the good folks over at the Inkwell Bookstore.
To me, Fun Home’s sole shortcoming was it’s almost complete lack of comics magic. There are so many storytelling devices unique to comics, it seemed a waste of the artform for Bechdel to stick to a basic picture-describes-words/words-describe-picture template. You can open up to any page in Fun Home and see what I mean. In its 240 pages, I can count only a handful of instances where the illustrations actually add anything to the narration (or visa-versa). While Bechdel’s words do an amazing job of expressing her emotions and experiences, I can’t help but feel that Fun Home would’ve been just as effective as a 50 page prose story. Contrasting this, Likewise could’ve only been a comic book.
I had the opposite problem with Bottomless Belly Button. Shaw clearly has a mastery of/fascination with the many possibilities of a comics page. Open up BBB to almost any page and you’re sure to be wowed by his technical trickery. But the story itself? Pretty predictable. Part of it, I think, is the fact that Shaw was attempting to tell a highly emotional story while having never experienced any of those emotions himself. That’s not to say that a writer needs to have lived everything they write about, but if you’re making up a story from scratch, you’d better have one helluva an empathetic imagination. Shaw, at least in BBB, does not. The tale he tells contains zero surprise details or up-til-then unidentified emotional nuances. It’s almost as though he was attempting to re-tell a divorce-themed family drama he’d seen on TV or heard from a friend of a friend. It never feels authentic. Likewise, on the other hand, is so much weirder, so much messier, so much more full of insightful observation and — I don’t know — realness?