Monthly Archives: January 2011

Utilitarian Review 1/14/11

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On HU

I wrote about films and self-reflexivity in Tarkovsky’s Solaris

James Romberger discussed the beginnings of his love for Alex toth and Jack Kirby.

Richard Cook looked at the gay hijinks in the 1992 Marvel Swimsuit Special.

Jason Michelitch discussed Face/Off, The Death of Superman, and the pointless inevitability of hero fiction.

Ng Suat Tong reviewed Mezzo and Pirus’ King of the Flies.

I try to remember a panel from Peanuts.

I talk about class in the Big Bang Theory.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At the Metabunker, Matthias Wivel happily anticipates the Fantagraphics edition of Carl Barks.

At Comixology, I compare the Iron Man movie and Bataille’s poetry.

In another poem Bataille declares, “I fill the sky with my presence.” And that does seem to be the point for ecstatic modernity, whether pop dreck or snooty highbrow philosophizing. Presumably it’s Nietzsche’s fault that God is dead and all we’re left with is the will to power of arms traders and self-proclaimed radicals. Or maybe Jung’s right and it’s just a mythopoetical heroic something — though it seems telling that we’ve only recently decided that we require one hysterically hyperbolic hero with a thousand faces rather than making do with all the dinky little heroes with one face each.

At Splice Today I tell Matt Yglesias not to bore the children.

Far from having a job in which discipline is necessary, Yglesias has one of the least disciplined jobs one could imagine. If being bored in school had any effect on him, it was not to instill an ability to focus on trivial, mindless tasks. Instead, it’s apparently convinced him to have nothing whatsoever to do with those tasks. He’s not going to spell. He’s not going to write about only economics and policy. He’s not going to work at a job he doesn’t want to. Such drudgery is for those school kids who need to be trained for lives of data entry and/or stupid paperwork. Matt Yglesias? He’s going to pat those little suckers on the head and go off and write a post about the Washington Wizerdds.

Other Links

I may have made fun of Matt Yglesias this week, but his diss of Sarah Palin is really funny.

And Jonathan Scalzi’s made me laugh too. She’s a good punchline, damn it.

Shaenon Garrity’s essay on Sandman is great.

One Brain to Rule Them All

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This essay first appeared on Splice Today.
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Americans in general, and American sit-coms in particular, take pride in being stupid, so no one is likely to be offended if I point out that the premise of The Big Bang Theory is somewhat dense. The show is based around the hilarious hijinks that result when a hot young waitress and aspiring actor named Penny moves into the apartment across the hall from a couple of nerdy physicists, Leonard and Sheldon. And…quick! What’s wrong with this picture?

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No Panel, No Border, No Beagle

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One of my all time favorite Peanuts panels is from the late 70s. Sally has corralled Snoopy first into helping her scare away bullies at the playground (“Speak softly and carry a beagle,”) and then into terrorizing innocents at the playground (“Speak loudly and carry a beagle.”) In this strip, Sally is stomping off to force some kid out of the sandbox. She thinks Snoopy is right behind her, ready to bark ferociously and run the kid off. But Snoopy, unbeknownst to Sally, suddenly perks up his ears and stares off frame. “My old flame!” he declares, and disappears. Sally’s left to the tender mercies of her unterrorized peers (“How can you speak softly and cary a beagle without a beagle!”) As for Snoopy and his flame…your guess is as good as mine. Was Snoopy just wandering off into one of his own fantasy scenarios? Did he really see a girl beagle from his youth? It’s a mystery. Schulz never followed up on the storyline. Snoopy disappeared from the panel, from the strip, and from the story.

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Can’t Fail. Can’t Die. Balding. Can Dance a Little. (The Pointless Inevitability of Hero Fiction)

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Hi, everyone, I’m Jason Michelitch, a semi-regular contributor over at Comics Alliance and a longtime-reader/sometime-commenter here at Hooded Utilitarian.   Noah kindly invited me to write this guest post for HU, which I’m going to kick off by admitting openly how many times I’ve watched the movie Face/Off, inviting the scorn and dismissal of you fine, educated people.  Let’s boogie!

I was watching Face/Off the other day, for maybe the baker’s dozenth time since catching it first run in the theater in ’97, and in the middle of the film, I began to wonder, “Why am I watching this?”  I mean, the broad answer was obvious:  I love Face/Off.  I would watch it anytime.  I would watch it right now.  But why?

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Superheroes in Speedos

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[Mildly NSFW]

I spent part of my New Years weekend at my brother’s house, digging through his big box o’ comics and trying to determine which ones were mine. As it turns out, my adolescent self bought every X-Men comic ever published. And I mean all of them, even the Gambit series (and I don’t even like Gambit!). Fortunately, my embarrassment was somewhat diminished when I realized that my brother had even worst taste (lots of early Image Comics). The great find of that evening was the Marvel Swimsuit Special from 1992. Neither of us admits to buying it (I accused him, he accused me, so things go) and I don’t remember ever reading it.

Cover by Marc Silvestri

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Toth, Internalized

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by James Romberger

Since I am precisely the type of brutally obsessive yet overly sensitive observer that qualifies me to write for The Hooded Utilitarian, I am unable to ignore a few references I have seen online to my “fannish adoration” of the work of genius cartoonist Alex Toth. Answering them also gives me the opportunity to address some critical shortfalls that I have seen in the literature about Toth.

I do feel that Toth’s work is head and shoulders above that of most artists who have worked in the medium thus far. I and many other artists find Toth to be a great teacher. It is instructive to figure out how and why his odd approach works so well. Artists may not see his art in the same way as someone who is not an artist, but there are also many, many non-artists who appreciate the depth of Toth’s skills—and some who do not.

A critique that is often leveled at Toth should be dispensed with. Unfortunately, in order to appreciate his work, one must overlook the quality of the writing in most of the stories he drew. That can be said for every four-color comic book artist that worked with writers. But some seem to blame the artist for this. Even though Toth had higher artistic standards than his contemporaries, he was not any more responsible than they were for the texts they worked with. If not for bad scripts, there would be no Toth comic book art and in fact, there would be no comics at all.

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