I think I just invented this word, possibly; results from Google are mixed.
It seems like a natural. People are always complaining about fanboys and fangirls, fannishness. “Fandoom” has got to come in handy.
What Am I Reading This Week?
You can find out the answer to that question at Robot 6 where I’m the guest on their weekly reading round-up post. Brigid Alverson also weighs in on Archie; a bunch of chatter about Grant Morrison’s Batman and Robin…so check it out.
Justice League: Flat
I just saw a couple of episodes of Bruce Timm’s Justice League cartoon series. The series had been recommended, and you generally hear good things about Timm and his shows. But, on the other hand, I’ve never actually enjoyed any episodes I watched of these series. The same with this weekend’s Justice League episodes (“Paradise Lost” 1 & 2, about Felix Faust bossing around Wonder Woman because he’s turned her mother to stone). Nice animation work, as far as I can judge, pleasing colors, well-done sound, okay cast of voices. But the writing is dumb. I mean, in its way I’m sure it’s as professional as everything else about the shows, but that way is very limited. The characters don’t do or say interesting things, they just hop around until the plot’s requirements have been fulfilled, and the plots don’t seem that remarkable. My impression is that the stories are pretty much the sort of thing modern-day DC stories are, but telescoped and without any smutty stuff.
I don’t know if others agree about the writing and accept it as part of the deal — maybe the look of the shows can make all else worthwhile, if you’re so inclined — or if the writing strikes others as being better than it strikes me.
Personally, I wonder if there’s much any writer can do with 22 minutes to tell a story to kids, not unless he/she is being funny and/or dealing with some very particular moment, as opposed to writing about a bunch of people milling about and pursuing various complicated and very serious aims. When that’s the subject, a writer’s doing his job if she/he just lines up the story elements and keeps them clear for the audience. But I sure don’t find the results interesting.
Explain Spider-Man To Me
Eric Rupe over at The Weekly Crisis wonders aloud:
It occurs to me that I’ve never seen anyone complaining that the 40th volume of Naruto should be accessible. Why is it only for Marvel and DC that people complain about the material being inaccessible? I mean, being generous here, the big Marvel and DC characters have been around for at least 30 years, often a lot more, and most have been in constant publication during that time as well. How do you tell continuously “accessible” stories with those kinds of characters without devolving into some sort of Archie status quo where nothing ever really happens?
Obviously, you need jumping on points, but lets take two examples from Marvel – the Ultimate Universe and Brand New Day. Sure, at the start, they were probably both good places to start, but, after a while, they do develop in title continuity and become “inaccessible” to new readers. It’s something that you are never going to be able to “fix” and still tell stories worth reading. I think Marvel did find something of a good solution though with their “Saga” free issues (ex. War of Kings Saga), but they are still only available in comic stores or on their websites, which only really preaches to the choir instead of making the comics accessible to new people.
Well, since Rupe is confused, let me explain.
Naruto #40 isn’t accessible…but anyone who can count can look at the cover, and say, “oh, right…I should start reading this series….at number 1. Simple, easy, based on the Arabic numeral system which is familiar to most likely readers. That is what you call “accessible.”
On the other hand, let’s take those two examples from Marvel. The Ultimate Universe and Brand New Day, you say. And I, as a new potential reader of Spider-Man, respond, “What the fucking fuck?” Ultimate Universe? Regular Universe? New Day? Old Day? Are these Spider-Man comics? What’s the difference between these Spider-Man comics? Where’s the real Spider-Man comic…the one that’s, you know, about Spider-Man?
Naruto has one single, simple, clear point of entry. Spider-Man has fifteen gazillion points of entry, none of which are actually a beginning. Therefore, Naruto is accessible and Spider-Man is a lot less so. Except for the Marvel Adventures all-ages Spider-Man, which has individual stand-alone adventures. Like Archie. And which is actually pretty good.
Update: Matt Maxwell weighs in.
Revolving Utilitarians. In Hoods.
After this week, Bill Randall is going to be taking a blog break for a few weeks. In his absence, the lovely and talented Cerusee has very kindly agreed to substitute blog with us. Some of you may remember Cerusee from her comments on the Mary Sue roundtable. You can read more of her reviews and prose at her livejournal.
We’re doing a roundtable this week on Fandom Confessions — things we liked when we were younger that we now think maybe we shouldn’t have. Both Bill and Cerusee will be contributing, so give him a nice (temporary) farewell, and her a nice welcome, ya hear?
Sorry, I just find this funny
From a Tory newspaper of the nineteenth century via Wikipedia via Balloon Juice:
Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned, now he knows whether there is a God or not.
It’s so brutal and childish, so vindictive, but also so straightforward. “Hey Shelley, how about it. You see God now?” I like it that the notice doesn’t assume God really exists and that Shelley must be meeting his deserts in the afterlife. He’s dead, and that’s enough to make the guy who wrote the notice happy. The fellow, whoever he was, may not have cared much about God’s existence or nonexistence; possibly what he condemned was just “infidel” opinions, the foppishness of free thinking. If so, this strikes me as a very Tory combination of attitudes.
Keith Richards on a boat crossing the English Channel
Marie, an acquaintance at the cafes, told me the following story: She was twenty years old and inside the big ferry that took people back and forth between Dover, in England, and Calais in France. The Rolling Stones were there, going to France for a tour. They had a truck loaded with equipment, and they stood around talking quietly, not making a fuss about themselves. “Keith Richard, he give me a smile,” Marie said, a couple of times, still proud. She said she’d been walking past the group, trying to get a look, and she’d been holding her little daughter Catherine, who was then just a year old but is now forty-two.
We were talking because Marie just had a biopsy and is now waiting to hear what her specialist has to say. You can see the poignance in this situation — present-day Marie and Marie as a lovely young mother with child. She’s scared right now, and it takes a few minutes’ talk before she brightens up and remembers the Keith Richards moment. But even at the best of times, when Marie is her usual, high-spirited self, there is still something wrong with her. She told me once that she had been on a heavy prescription tranquilizer for years, against anxiety, and I guess I would describe her as zonked. Her gaze rarely comes together. She’s big and vague, and she has trouble judging what’s what: when she sees a familiar barista, she acts like a friend is back from Europe. For someone who hangs out in coffee shops, she has no idea how to talk indoors; you have to gently talk her down and lower her volume.
To tell the truth, it’s a relief when you notice that she has clean clothes, that her hair is styled. She isn’t a derelict and she’s got a life. I see her with friends sometimes, other old folks, and she talks a lot about her two daughters. She has an apartment and invited me to Sunday afternoon party, and of course I forgot to go. But she was fine with that; lots of other people had been there.
My favorite Marie story is when I bought a new laptop and she was poking her finger at one pretty picture or another on the screen. “Ah, c’est beau,” she said, and she lunged from the hips; her finger got to the screen first, but her whole torso was in train. “Marie, pas de doigts, s’il vous plait,” I told her. She said, “Oh, pardon,” but a moment later she was lunging again: “Ah, c’est belle!” If she likes looking at something, she wants to touch it.
A friend, another cafe rat, told me once that he thought Marie was infantile. That’s right in its essential part: she really is like a child, something I didn’t put together until my friend pointed it out. But normally “infantile” implies brattishness, and Marie is a sweetheart. She really wanted to keep her fingers off my new screen, but then she saw that picture of a sand dune and forgot herself. I guess “childlike” would do it, but the word makes me think of a poet with a childlike vision or of a girl who has a childlike seriousness. With Marie it’s an all-over, universal, constant childlikeness, and I feel that a term with a clinical sound is called for. To me it’s like her stages of development have been razed right back to the ground floor; lucky for her she was a happy child, because all those other years have been wrecked.
Her attention doesn’t last, which is good in a way. We have a couple minutes of talk, always a lively and agreeable couple of minutes, and then she says, “Au revoir, Tom. Goodbye, Tom” and I go back to my computer. Yesterday I saw her in conversation with another man, one who kept her longer than she wanted. He was sitting, she was standing, and as they talked Marie started to flex and straighten at the knees; her chin bobbed bob up and down. She looked like a ten-year-old who wanted to climb something.
Anyway, that’s the rundown on Marie. Her appointment with the specialist is Thursday, and now that I think of it, I leave town Friday for a couple of weeks in New York. So who knows when I’ll find out whether she has cancer. I like her, and I make a point of listening when we talk, but really I’m a good acquaintance, not a good friend.