Pictures. Comedy. Weirdness. Trash. Jackson.
It doesn’t matter if it’s Mormonism or Thelema, you can see how this scenario keeps playing itself out: A work of fiction, in many cases influenced by “real” beliefs, is released. People either take it seriously, or they pretend to, and they start up a real cult. The cult becomes big enough that it influences another generation of fiction and lore, and the cycle repeats.
Read More“Thus I became the UFO Guy, the X Files Guy, the Bigfoot Guy and yeah, the Black Helicopter Guy.”
Read More“…someone from Texas handed me a VHS tape back in 1999.
“Alex Jones: Black Helicopters” was what he had written on it.
He handed it to me because Black Helicopters were my thing. I was the UFO Guy.
“UFO Guy” was a whole social role in the 90s, and it was mine.”
Read MoreJERPS - Junior’s Easy Roleplaying System
As someone who’s created more homebrewed RPG systems than children but who also has a child, I decided to come up with an RPG that a 4 year old can play. Something that can be run by one parent without much preparation or forethought, and can easily involve a friend, parent, or sibling. While I have not tested this with older children, my wife often joins in these games and finds them easy enough that she does not need a cheat sheet, while it’s not so simple that it is boring.
This is JERPS, Junior’s Easy Roleplaying System. First I’ll describe the basic mechanics governing JERPS, then show you a few examples of characters, adventures, and encounters, before ending with a brief discussion of how to run your game.
You’ll need a handful of regular six sided dice, a standard d20 gaming dice set, some coins, and probably some other tokens like poker chips or fun counters. I recommend some other materials at the end of the piece - some of which are highly recommended - but these are the only necessary pieces.
Rolling a 4 or better is considered a “success.” The majority of tasks require 1 success to achieve. Some require 2, and very difficult ones require 3 or 4. These successes must take place over multiple turns, which is where your tokens, coins, and counters come in.
That’s it for your basic mechanics. You may realize that’s not quite enough to play a game, so let’s talk about some things like classes, skills, spells, and those other things that take up endless chapters of most RPG sourcebooks.
These are the three classes I have created. They should be enough for most games, but ideas for creating your own are listed after this.
Wizard: The wizard has 3 HP, and can zap people with a wand. (Ranged attack, +0 to the roll). They know things (+2) and can cast two spells (+2, more on those later)
Elf: The elf has 4 HP, and can shoot people with a bow. (Ranged attack, +2 to the roll). They are good with animals and the wilderness (+1) and can fight with a staff(+1). They have one spell. (+0).
Barbarian: The barbarian has 5 HP, and can attack people with a hammer (melee attack, +2) They are good at physical things like jumping and running. (+2). They can throw a hammer if they need to. (+0).
You can rename the classes if you like. Wizard may become “Unicorn.” Barbarian may become “Warrior Princess.” Elf may become “Dog Dad.”
Leave cosmetic things like appearance, what sort of species they want to play, age, all up to them. They may want to be a pony. They PROBABLY want to play a pony. That’s fine. The classes can be flavored however you want, and named whatever you want.
These short skill lists are not meant to be exhaustive, they are meant to be broad categories. You should give them a +1 if you’re feeling like they MIGHT know it. +2 is meant for class-specific certainties, just like +0 is meant for things that they certainly would NOT be good at - like a wizard punching people.
Whenever you roll a d6, that’s a “skill.” There is no real difference between making an attempt at hiding or talking or making an attack. Most of the time, one success is all you need. If you want to do something like “you have to hide from a keen-eyed elf” then they should have to hide twice, over two rounds, instead of putting a penalty on the roll, or requiring a 5 or 6.
The class skills are general, a character should have one class of skills they’re good at (+2) and one class of skills they’re okay at (+1). Everything else is rolled as-is. As I stated above, I don’t like to give kids penalties to things - if it’s really hard, just make it take more successes to do.
If you want to make your own classes, keep in mind that every character basically has +4 worth of things they are good at!
That can be two skills at +2, or one at +2 and two at +1. Every other roll is “as is.” For every spell they start off knowing, they should have 1 less HP, starting with five.
Every character should START with between 3 and 5 hit points.
You do not really “level up” in JERPS. You can reward quests and activities with rewards that enhance the character, but keep in mind that this game is designed to be played without a character sheet (because your players may not be able to read) and shouldn’t get too complicated. You should be able to make all your notes about your players fit on a post-it. Maybe a small notebook page.
Good rewards will give the players extra abilities to do things, but keep in mind that young players often enjoy friends, forts, and parties much more than they do a +1 battleaxe.
Example of rewards:
An extra HP (usually this takes the form of armor)
A spell.
A better weapon (turn a +1 attack into a +2 attack, or a +0 into a +1)
Equipment that makes them better at a skill.
Gold/money.
Forts and hideouts.
Pets and pals.
Healing potions and magic crystals.
(These are ways to replenish spells, or cast more powerful spells - see SPELLS)
If your players end up with multiple +1s, +2s, and consider some +3s, you may want to start a character sheet or even take up a more complex RPG.
Wizards start with two spells and elves with one. You can let your players choose their spells, or you can choose for them. They can cast each spell once per session, or get them back when they rest.
They can get a spell back with a spell crystal or by touching a magic fountain or whatever mechanic you feel would give them a spell back. Throw these in whenever you like.
Every spell should have an associated physical die. To cast the spell, they roll the die. After they roll the die, if they get a 4 or better, the player will hand you the die. If it fails, they keep the die.
You return all their dice when they get their magic back. As the character becomes more powerful, you can give them a bigger die. (Making it easier for them to succeed) Using multi colored or sparkling fun dice is a nice touch for this.
You can name these spells or flavor them however you want. Just keep the basic mechanics and the dice size.
Sleepytime: Point at someone and make them go to sleep. D6. This one does not expend dice!
Pew-Pew: Point at someone and shoot magic bolts at them. d8.
Lightning Bolt: Shoot a lightning bolt in a straight line at as many people as you can connect. D10.
Healing: Give someone back all their hit points. d12.
Sparklebomb: Choose an area and blast everyone with sparkles. D20.
Plenty of other spells can be developed along these lines. Animal charming (d10) and invisibility (d8) are two favorites at our table.
A game should only last about 15-30 minutes, though that is entirely dependent on your child’s attention span at the moment. A play map or mat is pretty much a necessity. You can buy a blank battle grid with dry-erase markers for 25 dollars online. Just search for “reusable battle map grid.” The maps can be simple - big blocks for castles and houses, lines for corridors - kids will fill in plenty with their imagination. It’s also a good idea to let them draw their own maps with some guidance - filling in the basic shape with one color marker, then letting them add details and fluff.
Paper cutouts or cardboard icons are very fun - let them make their own, or pick from a wide, colorful selection. A good selection of these can be found at most of your comic book shops/game shops, or online. Small plastic toys are also suitable for this.
There are two basic types of interaction. Roleplaying and turn-taking. Much of the time, players are talking to each other or just you, they’re asking about the world or you’re telling them about the world. They can walk around the map uninhibited and without having to worry about how far they’re moving. You should make sure to take turns here anyway, to give each player a time to act, if there’s more than one player.
In turn-by-turn ACTION, each player has a turn that they take in sequence. Roll dice to see who goes first. (You may want to give some characters bonuses to this roll). If a player wants to go AFTER another player, that’s fine, but they cannot choose to go BEFORE their roll on the dice.
During ACTION, your players get to do two things per turn:
Roll a d6 to see how far they can move. (I usually let them move 3 spaces plus the total on the die)
Roll a skill.
You can get as involved with this as you think your kid has tolerance for. They may, for instance, want to draw swords with a badguy, making rolls to see who draws first and try to intimidate someone. They may need to pull someone up a rope ladder they are climbing themselves. Both of these things could be done as two rolls on the same turn. Generally I try and limit a turn to two rolls for the sake of pacing (everyone else hates waiting for their turn) but it’s not a hard and fast rule.
Conceptually, a turn lasts about 5-10 seconds, and each player’s turn somewhat overlaps with the other. It’s a weird RPG mainstay that kids don’t seem to question as much as I do.
You may have seen me say “flavor” several times. “Flavor” in RPG terms means the actual way things play out in the description and game-world, not in terms of rules. For example, a fireball spell and a sparkleball spell are the same mechanically: they remove enemies from the board in a certain area. But while fireball does so with fire and probably horrible murder, sparkleball puts people to sleep with sparkles. Adjust your flavor to your setting. If you’re doing spacemen instead of wizards, maybe sparkleball is a sort of grenade, for instance.
Enemies use the same mechanic as your players - they roll a d6, attempting to get a 4 or better. Most generic mook enemies get no bonuses to their rolls. More intimidating minions might get a +1. Most enemies only have one hit point (it only takes one success to remove from the board).
No matter how hard they are hit, the player only loses 1 HP. Running out of HP means they are knocked out, usually to be captured and “allowed” to escape.
With kids, and this mechanic in hand, you have a way to end one of the more ridiculous tropes of D&D and it’s ilk: that every enemy fights you to the (ok, their) death. Enemies can be knocked out, run away (I usually have them run away) surrender, get captured, become friends, become frenemies, and the like. Kids do like blasting apart skeletons and zombies, though.
An encounter does not have to be a fight. Talking to goblins (kids like small things) training dogs, and giving food to mischievous gnomes are all good fantasy tropes kids like.
By sparing enemies and talking to them, your players will inevitably corral some minions and companions. You don’t have to worry about long lists of stats for their friends and followers - they have a d6 and 1 HP. It’s a good idea to have them go out and do things apart from the party, for pacing reasons.
Kids will often run away from scary monsters! That’s fine. Running away should present itself as a “chase.” Kids love being chased. Set a number of successes they’ll need to escape. Let the monster roll - monster successes remove one from the pool. If they run out of successful escapes, the monster gets them, starting a fight. If they reach the goal, they escape.
You can use this mechanic for a variety of competitions against an NPC. Races, lifting things, treasure hunts - anything that’s a contest that isn’t a direct fight.
Two things dictate how difficult a given encounter is: How many successes it takes to finish, and how many encounters have you had without replenishing spells and hitpoints.
A good rule of thumb for beginning adventurers is that they can get through this many challenges before things get too hard: [(number of players x 2) + total party HP + total number of spells in party.]
A “challenge” is anything that requires a success to overcome, and can cause them to lose HP. So, one jump over a chasm is 1 challenge. An encounter where an enemy has 2 HP counts as two challenges. Speaking with an NPC is not a challenge, and a chase is not a challenge (Though it may involve making challenges! If they can lose an HP by failing their skill roll, it’s a challenge!)
Example: If you had one player who was an elf (4 HP, 1 spell) you could put them through 7 challenges before they would need to rest or recharge to get back their HP and spells. That might mean 3 skeletons (1 HP each), a big skeleton boss (2 HP) and two obstacles. It might mean two ogres (3 HP each) and a falling rock, or any number of combinations. As your players get better at strategy and tactics, this can change considerably. Don’t be afraid to let them find a potion to regain hit points or a magic crystal to recharge spells if things aren’t going their way.
That’s it! Now get some battle mats, some markers, and some tokens and have some fun!
“I would like to ask you to think of WandaVision as being about the tension between Fan Fiction and Canon.”
Read MoreWant to know how to make carbonara? I’ve got you covered. It’s not nearly as difficult as people think.
Read MoreNote: This is a spectacularly spoiler-heavy review of Rise of Skywalker. Don’t come here if you want parts of the movie to surprise you.
BE WARNED
Robert Foster is the Mississippi Republican best known for trying and failing to make “My Truck, My Rules” a thing. His father, the surgeon Mike Foster, wrote an apocalyptic novel called The Right to Bear Arms.
I read most of The Right to Bear Arms. This is my review.
Read MoreTony Stark of the Marvel Universe and the MCU (Earth 616 and Earth-199999 for those of you playing along at home) may be an engineering genius, but his HUD and UI designs leave a lot to be desired.
Read More
Me, dishing out the rankings
You know you have waited for this: for me to rank and wax poetic about the cinematic offerings of the “comic book movies.”
I divided them into three tiers: The top tier are movies that I consider to be good and enjoyable, the middle tier are good Marvel Comic Book Movies, and the bottom tier, which is just movies that exist.
Note: this has been updated since it’s original inception in June of 2018, to include the movies that have come out since then.
MOST RECENT UPDATE: March 2019 - Captain Marvel
#1: Thor: Ragnarok
Thor: Ragnarok, even moreso than the other top tier offerings on this list, achieves a unique headspace: It is a Comic Book Movie, and like the namesake medium, it uses color and spectacle to create a confidently outrageous story.
It recalls artists like Simonson and Kirby, who, to become fully engaged in a medium where color and splash took precedence, turned to cosmic scenes and themes, pages of gods, aliens, and apocalypse.
Thor: Ragnarok also has a top-notch soundtrack, takes a moment to show the characters out of their elements, and even gives a little time to dabble in some side themes of colonialism, or, perhaps, the ownership of art and stories. That aside is perfect for the third movie in a series based on a fifty-year run comic book based on an ancient aliens version of a Nordic myth.
Above all, Ragnarok is absurdly confident, and more than any other movie on this list, it uses the Big Comic Book Movie budget to serve up memorable visual images from the pages of a Simonson-era psychedelic splash page, with colors that any inker and colorist would kill for. It also has a good soundtrack!
#2: Black Panther
More than most of the other films on this list, Black Panther is interesting and probably the most “serious” of all. That doesn’t stop it from being fun, and the supporting characters are top-notch, better than any of the other films - even ensemble offerings like Avengers.
Black Panther is bright, colorful, and kinetic. Wakanda is beautiful, a well-realized and rich setting, and the mid-film action sequences are a notch above the usual smash-cut and CGI blur offerings from the MCU. Like all the top-tier MCU films, it’s confident, well-designed, and artistic.
The storyline is human and compelling. The costumes are gorgeous. Killmonger simultaneously comes across as a sympathetic figure and as a brutal villain. There’s the best soundtrack of anything in the MCU. It was a cultural phenomenon leading up to the release, and honestly, watching people thrill over a real Black Panther movie was worth the line on opening day.
#3: TIE: Guardians of the Galaxy 1 & 2
Yes, I decided these can tie. If we’re talking about the confidence from the previous films, GotG 2 has it far more than the first - but maybe it doesn’t entirely earn it, either. Both have muddled messes of endings that would be sore spots if the rest of the flick wasn’t consistently comically and cosmically enjoyable.
The soundtracks make good use of Quill’s “Awesome Mix,” but when we’re not getting pop hits the bland orchestrals really stand out. Seriously, the MCU needs some help on that “blur-of-horns and strings” thing they’ve got going on.
#4: Spiderman: Homecoming
Spiderman would be firmly mid-tier if not for the outstanding villain, and the “reveal” of who that villain is was definitely the best “oh shit” moment in the entire MCU. Like the films before, though - it’s confident, colorful, and witty.
Plus - there’s no origin story. You’ll notice that none of the top-tier films are origin stories. There’s never a need for an origin story.
#5: Captain America: Winter Soldier
Winter Soldier is at the bottom of this tier because it is not particularly confident. Muddled stories are par for the MCU course, but the usually scintillating colors come through a bit drab, and the action scenes are more blurry than not. This is still a top-tier Marvel flick, however, because of the story. A massive spy organization turns out to be evil! It’s more serious than most, and lets a good bit of spy-thriller accoutrements come through, to save it from being boring. While still a comic book movie (and crashing a SHIELD helicarrier, which is required), it’s clear, well-paced, and never gets bogged down. Plus, there’s Batroc, the Leaper.
His whole thing is that he can jump, but he’s not that great at it. Plus, evil Sitwell!
#6 Ant Man and The Wasp
The second Ant Man movie is possibly TOP TIER content - we’ll just have to wait till I’ve seen it a few times to be sure. It solves the problem of the first by not being an origin story and by having a better class of villain.
#7: Captain Marvel
More than any mid-tier movie, CM takes some chances. It has flashbacks, a surprise “guess who the real badguy is,” a different take on Nick Fury, and a different setting (the 90s!). This elevates it out of the origin story muck. In fact, this is the only time I don’t care that it’s an origin story. But, the (actual) badguys are boring, there’s an almost entirely pointless first part, and the ending is a little bit much on the hyperkinetic CGI.
#8: Ant Man
Ant Man is amusing, and on a different scale (in a lot of ways) than the other MCU films. It’s humorous, and tightly done, with a lot of really creative uses of Ant-Man’s powers. It’s only kept out of the top tier of films by the fact that it’s an origin story - which means that it’s a not-particularly-interesting story, and it has forgettable antagonists. I mean that. I forgot who the bad guys are.
#9: Iron Man
Iron Man deserves some props for letting Marvel know they could make billions of dollars doing this, and also for one of the all-time best portrayals of Tony Stark. Thankfully, they decided to shed the whole “Iron Man is Tony Stark’s bodyguard,” one of the most ridiculous and stifling artifices of classic comics, but it would not be enough to save the subsequent films. Also it’s an origin story, which is hard to do right.
#10: Captain America: The First Avenger
I really only ranked this higher than Civil War due to the song and dance numbers. It’s a good, stock-standard superhero movie, a bit of a comic book flick, and a touch of WWII movie. In other words, it’s perfect Captain America.
#11: Captain America: Civil War
Maybe it’s an artifact of the times we live in, but it seems a waste to constantly run with the darkest MCU storylines in the Captain America flicks. Those big bright reds, whites, and blues just don’t seem to work in stories like this - though the great core conflict and the perfect badguy - keep Civil War in the middle of the pack.
I do mean “perfect badguy.” The superheroes of the world almost annihilate each other due to a scheming dork, Helmut Zemo, who has an incredibly dorky name.
Also, let us not kid ourselves, Captain America: Civil War is really just a prequel to Black Panther, which is what moves it up the list.
#12: Avengers: Infinity War
I’m just going to say that it had a strong finish, and it was manipulative. It gets points for a supreme act of confidence of an ending, and Thanos is cooler than any dumb rationalization he has for his nihilistic urges. Also, a major bonus for the throwback to “Farmer Thanos” which I begged Marvel to include in the film, on twitter, for years. I can only assume they read my bizarre tweets and followed through.
#13: Doctor Strange
Doctor Strange is one of my favorite Marvel heroes, due to his weird spells, cosmic adventures, and amazingly colorful art. His origin story is not worth repeating, but this film does it anyway, instead of making it 30 seconds in the intro credits. The ending sequence COULD have been a confusing blurry mess of CGI and half-baked ideas, but it wasn’t - it was a faithful rendition of the kind of weird things that the comics were known for, and that keeps this film out of the bottom tier just on the final act alone.
#14: Iron Man 2
Iron Man 2 contains a great movie about Tony Stark being an asshole. It’s got a manipulative, fun villain we can empathize with, but then it tacks on a movie that’s entirely unnecessary, the “Tony gets his mojo back” subplot, diluting what could have been a #6-9 spot down to the bottom of this tier.
#15: Thor
Look man. It’s Thor. We GET Thor. He’s got a certain cultural cache that you could have just GONE WITH. But no, we did the “Thor gets his powers back” route. That was useless. Thor demands a certain confidence and over-the-top ridiculousness this film could not commit to.
#16: Marvel’s The Avengers
The Avengers is a pretty good movie, but then there’s a very boring movie wedged in the middle of it.
#17: Avengers: Age of Ultron
Age of Ultron is a pretty good movie, then a boring movie, then a second, somehow more boring visually jumbled movie, then a confusing movie. It got it’s name from the fact that it feels like it takes an actual Ultimate Age.
#18: The Incredible Hulk
They really did make this movie. It does exist. There really is some good footage of the Hulk beating the shit out of stuff. The ending makes little sense, but at least it’s contrived. No, wait...
#19: TIE: Iron Man 3/Thor: Dark World
I swear I’ve seen these movies, but I may not have. I may have just recalled trailers. I may have just wished I only saw the trailers.
Note: More content will follow as Marvel keeps making these damn things.
A preview
LOVE
on
NETFLIX
Few shows contain such pure expressions of their title's antithesis as Judd Apatow 's LOVE. Clearly, Apatow is aware that he entertained us with his hopeful glimpse of potentially escaping banal mediocre suburban Uber-whiteness in his beloved show ''Freaks and Geeks.”
Rather than returning to that endearing vision of a relatable, human world, Apatow has, in the interim, grown so estranged from the feelings of humanity that he can no longer express them. Decades of Hollywood's vapid, meaningless excess have left him only able to approach human emotional states through the metaphor of drug highs, proving that, at least, he still shares some semblance of brain chemistry with humanity.
We cannot love these characters we cannot recognize as human, and as they cannot love one another for the same reason. They are trapped in the uncanny valley. They have alien, Los Angeles jobs. They struggle mightily with simple problems, they elicit but one emotion- pity. They remind me of the characters in the obscenely overrated film American Beauty: wallowing in their self-created problems, intentionally worsening them in order to feel anything at all.
LOVE is a show about what it means to be a machine masquerading as a human being. The machine wants this thing it has only heard about through toxic media and painful emo poetry slams at pretentious coffeehouses. It tries to emulate us and it cannot, for if it had a soul to sell, it was long ago brokered away for the chance to put the travails of the machine on Netflix.
FPJEROME
"DO NOT GO TO EARTH. Terrible service. Food fights back. Not worth the trip.
Read MoreIn which we discuss discovering Star Wars, and embarrassing secrets about the author are revealed.
Read More"I am in the world of fire and brimstone and giant crosses outside of fried fish buffets. Who are these people who haven't heard any of the teachings of Jesus?"
Read More"As a culture, we're not in a place where we want to listen rich New York families and old white guys - and that's Reed Richards. Science doesn't have the pull that Tony Stark's technology does. With what we've all found out about ourselves, we're not excited about exploration, discovery, and the unknown - American culture hasn't been for quite some time. But we're rounding that particular corner, I think.
Read MoreFor my review of Part 1 of Black Panther, look here.
Before we get to the review, there's something I would like to point out about Black Panther #1, if you saw Civil War, which I enjoyed. In Black Panther #1, there's a little talker with Brian Stelfreeze that mentions Wakandan technology.
If you can't read this, CLICK TO EMBIGGEN.
If you're watching closely, you see Black Panther use his Kimoyo band in Civil War. That's all. Anyway, onto the review.
This is a slow build. The good things that I said about the last issue are still all true - the prose is tight and spartan, the inks are strong, the colors are big. As I predicted in my last installment, the story is slowly coming together, though to be fair, some ground must be retreaded, as one must often do in comics, given the episodic nature of the medium.
The actors we saw moving against T'Challa are still in play, the rogue Dora Milaje in their Midnight Angel armor, (which looks like a cross between a beetle and a predator) the mysterious Zenzi (who gets a great technicolor mind-fight scene this issue) the bandits, all are slowly moving toward a showdown with Black Panther, who seems to be spending a lot of his time getting his groove back.
In the past, some (but not all) comics writers tended to treat Wakanda as though we, the readers, were also forbidden from setting foot in the nation. Coates isn't doing that. We're seeing Wakanda, and Wakandans, and they're not happy with their king. They've got a lot of reasons not to be - after the events of the last Black Panther run, the marriage to Storm, the fights with the Scrulls, Doctor Doom waging a war in typical sinister fashion, Thanos's Black Order - things have not been well in Wakanda. As an aside, you should read Doomwar. It's got some great Doctor Doom scenes, which are my favorite scenes.
There's a nice, extended fight scene in the middle that's also a meditation on the actions of kings that Coates pulls off nicely. There's a poetic conversation between a professor and a shaman. These scenes, and similar ones from the first issue, are the highlights of the books so far, letting Stelfreeze show off his composition chops and excellent panel-framing, while Coates writes freely.
It's a small thing, but I do like the way Black Panther's helmet flows onto his head. The curlicue circuitry and glow seem both high-tech and uniquely "Wakandan." It has the shapes and colors and some design elements of Africa, but some of Jack Kirby - it is it's own fantastic thing. The art and writing play up the technological advancement of Wakanda in a world where our current tech is catching up to what the comics of the seventies showed on the pages.
Other highlights? The redesign of the Black Panther garb - it looks like a damn panther. Anytime Stelfreeze draws fire. The looks on the faces of the kids. The "Black Panther playing with children" statue outside the school. The letters page, which a friendly and well-informed alternative to internet comments and forum trash talk.
Since I'm just going on now, let's point out one last thing: There's only three visualized sound effects in both issues - a "boom" in a prison cell in the first, a breaking window and a ringing phone in the second. Stelfreeze's art and neat lines draw the action efficiently enough - and the Black Panther is silent enough - that we don't need the "WHACK" and "CRASH" at all. The sounds are all drawn away into vibranium, that energy is stored in our minds, and we use it like a kimoyo band, illustrating it ourselves, providing that lasting detail.
I almost never urge people to spend money, but Black Panther's worth the small investment. Go down to Offbeat, or whatever local comic book shop you can, as long as it's not the one where they treat you like dirt for buying something different.
This is the newest thing I've ever reviewed. That's because it came out today. It's a quick read, worth your time, and your five dollars. If you're in Jackson, go to Offbeat and pick it up. Tell the Black Panther of Madison County that I sent you, and you'll get a special no-prize.
I've written about comic books before, but let's be fair - I didn't like what I was reading for a lot of reasons. But this Black Panther #1 is different. It's written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who has not written comics before.
He's written poetry and beautiful books, and that shows on every page. There's no lengthy diatribes in crimped print, you get terse, tight prose, no wasted words.
This was my first encounter with Brian Stelfreeze, and I want more. Coates's lack of text balloons and boxes lets Stelfreeze use simple beautiful lines all over the page, leaving big pools of black ink, deep shadows, and THICK lines. It evokes complex and detailed illustrations with a style like the writing - nothing wasted, just enough detail, no clutter. Your mind gleefully commits to closure, brings still images to life and motion.
It's not cartoony, nor is it overburdened with unnecessary realism. The spacious lines and figures let Laura Martin's colors inhabit big, sprawling spaces, filling each page with deep rich pools of black, purple, and red. Outside, there's bright blue skies, Wakandan technology bleeds weird neon energy.
It's not just the writing that's poetic, it's the ensemble. These creators have an understanding of comics - it's a soap opera in broad strokes, evocative, emblematic, symbolic. They're doing that, all the right details are there, nothing's jammed in the works, every sparse detail seems important without being weighty and overwrought.
The first act doesn't end on a cheap cliffhanger, it doesn't weigh you down. It sets you up, though, like the Black Panther would.
I'll be in the store the day it drops.
There are 102 comics listed in Marvel Unlimited for the "Civil War" event. I read almost every single one of them in 36 hours. This is what I've learned. Uh, spoiler alert for some comics that came out 10 years ago, I guess.
I'd love to tell you more about why I did this and my feelings on comics in general, but fuck all that, I'll do it later. We're going to get right to the meat of the discussion here: Marvel's Civil War was dumb as hell and not good.
For those of you who don't know what Marvel's Civil War was, and may be mistaking it for the movie that's coming out this summer - why are you still reading this?
For those of you who DO know, but need a refresher - Civil War was a main-line Marvel comics crossover event where months of comics all fed the same storyline, centered around a central conflict.
The central conflict is dumb. It is referenced in every single page. You know how the Fantastic Four have to remind us twice a year that they got their powers through cosmic rays, or Spider Man has to bring up "the bite" every third issue? Well, for about a year, in every single Marvel comic, a character would, not just on every issue, but on every page or so, remind you that the government wants superpowered people to register with S.H.I.E.L.D. because a bunch of people got blowed up real good.
In most Marvel comics, SHIELD (Stategic... uh, howitzer.. intervention.. elite... you know what, nevermind) is a cryptic worldwide superspy agency that used to be headed up by the eternally 50 year old hardass Nick Fury. Don't confuse it with that TV show "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." On TV, SHIELD is that group that accomplishes exactly one interesting thing per season and spends the rest of the time making gallows humor wisecracks. Unlike the Civil War comics, it's pretty okay!
In Civil War, SHIELD is a cross between hi-tech Nazis and the NSA. Those two are easy to confuse if you live in a world where Frank Miller wrote a few stories. The new Spiderman costume wasn't the only thing that straight-up changed without warning. In fact, all the characters in Marvel seem to have suddenly developed a bad case of not-being-themselves.
"Uh, have you looked at our caps recently?" "What? No." "Are... we we the baddies?"
Look. Knowing and training and tracking a dude that can punch a hole in a battleship? That's a pretty straightforward and reasonable idea, even when done by our clusterfuck of a government - and in Civil War, the government is not only a bit clusterfucktastic, it's run by a President Bush that may or may not be a robot, who asks Deadpool for help because a dude from the future is attempting to talk to him.
Honestly, that's the most realistic part of the whole thing.
Yeah. I'm going to say a lot of ridiculous things in this article, but they are "real." Also, this is a very bad drawing of President Bush or, perhaps, grey-haired Marco Rubio. Or, is it "President Bush's Reptoid Hands Confirmed?!"
Over the years, the Marvel Universe has seen planets get eaten, galaxies and universes have died, and anything that can explode, has exploded. There's usually sort of a general "we evacuated just in time!" or "the Hulk miraculously didn't kill everyone in that tank when he threw it to the moon" post-destruction handwaving. It's likely a comics-code leftover, and took a dive in the Carnage and Apocalypse 90's, but it does make you feel better about things, for the most part.
However, that goes out the window in the first act, in order to provide PLOT! It's the most transparent 9/11 allegory since Cloverfield didn't show you the monster (the monster was you all along, okay?) - a terrorist (I mean supervillian) blows up a town and we instantly know exactly how many people died because it's all on TV. Reality TV, because this is 2006.
Ah, the oldest problem in government: Security vs. Safety. Fortunately, the Marvel Universe has Reed Richards and Tony Stark, ostensibly two of the smartest men on Earth, in places of political power that aren't occupied by intelligent people in the real world.
Yes, they decide to provide icing for a perfectly reasonable pie by shitting all over it. Why? I guess these mega-geniuses didn't know any better, even though everyone they knew was screaming "DON'T SHIT ON THE PIE." Pies don't even GET icing, goddamnit.
The shit on the pie? There's a lot. You're not going to salvage this pie. First off, supervillains get leniency if they sign a paper and agree to work for the government if they help hunt down superheroes who don't register. If you don't see how this could have disastrous consequences, think if your average criminal confidential informant could shoot lasers out of his ears or mind-control people.
This is Stark Tower. This is the headquarters tower of someone who is evil. Sauron would take a look at this and go "whoa, that's a bit over the top, dude."
Superheroes who've saved the multiverse on a daily basis can become a Gitmo victim, and just as easily, Mr. "I'm a literal Nazi who murders people with glue" Baron Zemo can get a sweet government gig hunting them down, with the assistance of "I make weird traps and fight Spiderman" Z-listers like Paste-Pot-Pete, who wisely changed his name to The Trapster because... no, wait, that's not any better, Pete. Look, I don't care what your equations tell you, if you're working with Nazis to hunt down Captain America, you done fucked up.
Let's talk more pie-crap topping. Failing to register is punished harder than murder. In a move that could only be a 9/11 allegory - keep in mind that 9/11 happened in the Marvel Universe - the superfolk entirely forgo trials, lawyers and Captain America's Constitution - even when She-Hulk and DareDevil are perfectly good lawyers. Instead you're just exiled forever to the Negative Zone super-prison, named Project 42, in the biggest slap to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fans since the 2005 movie came out and featured "queuing" as a scene.
You know what could have avoided the entire deadly Civil War conflict? A jury. Imagine Iron Man throwing Captain America in jail after a trial where a conflicted jury decides to reduce his sentence to six months and a ten thousand dollar fine. Tony Stark tells Spiderman "You can't just put these guys in jail" while he's touring a jail he built to put them in. You don't have to make the Negative Zone trip last forever!
How long did it take me to come up with that idea? Twenty six seconds. Why haven't I invented flying tank armor or faster-than-light travel? We could have had more "nobody does anything but talk" scenes that would have worked out better, and been more interesting than the punch-discussions these characters had.
When it comes to thinking up "better ideas than the central conflict of Marvel Civil War," I'm like Reed Richards in his Delicate Mind room, scrawling equations on the walls. Sealed trusts for costumed heroes. Make everyone employees of Stark Enterprises and Damage Control. Expand Avengers membership. X Men charter schools. Listen to the Black Panther.
This is literally what Reed Richards stopped work on to devote time to his "throw my friends in space Gitmo" plan.
If "I'm not listening to Captain America and the Black Panther" is something you're saying, then stop what you're doing. Honestly, I spent thirty seconds here, Reed Richards. Did you stretch your brain out so that the synapses don't connect anymore?
I would never claim that the writers at Marvel are going to be any good at legalism. They treat law and civics the same way they treat science. The "Super Hero Registration Act" is to law what "Radioactive Spider Bite Made me a Spider" is to biogenetics.
Do you wonder why every Marvel event plays out in New York? It's because Marvel is based in New York, and their writers aren't allowed out much. They can't handle buses because they stand there for ten minutes saying things like 'the card reader senses magnetic information imprinted on this plastic wafer, so by vibrating this coin at the specific frequency, I should be able to fool it into thinking that this bus is actually a giant robot, allowing me to..." before they're thrown into the streets and forced to wander back home. The Marvel writers live in the same city as Neil deGrasse Tyson in order to keep him occupied so he doesn't build a death ray.
Even The Thing wises up. He goes to do his superhero thing in France for a while, which is really weird. I don't know if these French superheroes are real, but I kind of want them to be.
The hardest part about writing jokes about "Civil War" is that the plot itself is the joke.
The poor writers even rope the X-Men into the thing. The X-Men, who have been fighting various forms of mutant registration their entire life, suddenly develop a case of extreme, out-of-character apathy for everyone who's having to do that thing they always fought against.
Why? I have a theory. See, I don't know if you knew this, but ever since the 90s, nobody - not even the people who write X-Men comics, have had the slightest idea what the hell is going on with the X-Men. There's alternate universe brothers, robot clones, people from the future, aliens who are dead people who later turn out not to be dead, mind-wiped assassins, people brainwashed to believe that they're in alternate universes, more psychic possessions than a soap opera, and more resurrections than a Jesus convention. When Wolverine becomes the most relatable guy in your series, maybe you should dial it back a bit?
Through plotholes, wheedling, and needling, the X-Men kinda-sorta get involved, even though Cyclops is a massive tool.
Why? It involves people from the future or some alternate universe or something, I think? I read the books and I have no goddamn idea.
X-Man Wolverine (in his solo series) provides yet another metaphor for the whole Civil War. I honestly think some of the writers and artists were chaffing at being forced to write this claptrap, and kept providing clues. The only thing the characters do more than remind us of what is going on is remind us that "this is so stupid."
Wolverine goes on a killing spree to get to the bottom of the whole shebang, which is ironic since "the whole shebang" is broadcast live on National TV a few times. Since Wolverine is "...the best there is at what I do..." and what he does is "stabbing people," you'd think the writers would have tasked him with escaping a Negative Zone prison, or fighting off an alien invasion, or hunting down supervillians while the rest of Marvel is fighting itself.
But no, Wolverine is instead tasked with "making sense of all this." Yes, in a comic 'event' where there's a whole series devoted to journalists covering the news, Sir Stabsalot Fistknives is charged with getting to the bottom of something that's not a bottle, a chest cavity, or a throat. And, like the bewildered reader, he goes on a rampage, tearing through page after page of entirely extraneous nonsense - robots, conspiracies, Atlantis, shapeshifters, only to find out that a business is egging this all on because they stand to make money selling the government superhero-damage control.
In a better world, he could have picked up a newspaper. But in this world, the newspaper is entirely useless. Why? Let's go to that aforementioned series about journalists. This is a pointless excuse wrapped in a pointless exercise. Civil War is the only attempt to tie a war to a 9/11 that's more blatant than the war in Iraq. "Embedded," the 900 (or maybe it was just 11) part series embedded in the Civil War: Frontline comics is a "what it says on the tin" excuse to draw some parallels to modern journalism and war reporting. But yet all we get are reporters being grim and cynical and uncovering mind-blowing stuff they fail to report. It's significantly less exciting than finding out about J. Jonah Jameson's hair stylist. The intrepid reporters could expose the machinations of Tony Stark, and even give him a mic-drop style dressing down in his "totally not supposed to be Ayn Rand's book cover" penthouse office, then heroically... don't report it.
I AM NOT MAKING ANY OF THIS BULLSHIT UP
They even go out of their way to shit-talk Captain America for not having a MySpace account, not watching baseball (which is funny, because Captain America totally watches baseball) not watching American Idol, or going to NASCAR races. In other words, he's not their America. I don't know what the hell that's supposed to accomplish, other than making me proud of J. Jonah Jameson for firing these inconsistent, wildly ignorant reporters.
Apparently, I'm not qualified to America, either, Steve.
Embedded is a good look at two of the biggest sins in Civil War, other than the out-of-character actions and general stupidity of the plots.
One: It's needlessly grimdark and cynical, in that comic book edgelord way - rather than taking a single pull-back of the camera and revealing the crushing nihilism of the might-makes-right comic book world, it piles on things like gore, deaths, dripping voice balloons, and all the grit and angst you'd find in a high school D&D game, without the consequences. A great illustration? They turned Speedball, the happy-go-lucky speedster teen, into Penance, who wears spiked armor that hurts himself when he moves. That's not a joke or an overstatement. NONE OF THIS IS AN OVERSTATEMENT. If anything, I'm understating the sheer ridiculoucity of this shitfest.
Did your DM ever make the happy bard character into an armored psychotic masochist, or was that just me?
Secondly, the comics go way out of their way to show you that Tony Stark and Reed Richards are right and Captain America and Black Panther are wrong, because that's the only way you can make them appear sympathetic. Mr. Fantastic proves he's right, mathematically. The reporters who do the Tony Stark mic-drop? They don't tell America because they know he's right, like ethics and justice and morality were all equations that the right engineer would balance out. It's like something a TEDx presenter would spout off before assigning everyone breeding licenses based on a single viewing of Idiocracy.
Now, I'm sure you're thinking "there's no way it could be this pompous and overwrought. It's not like they took touching poems and stories of warfare, spanning everything from Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon, to the American Civil War, both World Wars, and Vietnam, just to make some point about superhero war super-sucking?
Of course they did. Each issue of Frontline ended with three page specials where the first half of the page was some conflict in which hundreds of thousands (or millions) of people died, and the second half was superheroes punching shit. This would be overlaid with some heart-wrenching poem or song or historical ballad, because at this point, the Civil War writers were like drug pushers, trying harder and harder each time to make you feel - feel anything - in the cold and dead world they'd weaved around you.
Pictured: American Civil War, World War 2, World War 1, World War 2 (again), the English Civil War, crossing of the Rubicon, and World War 2 (again). Not pictured: Dignity, Fun.
Civil War is the kind of story that a half-aware writer would write an out for - the obvious ones being "Professor X shows up and pulls the whammy" or "Doctor Strange magics the shit out of this thing," but Professor X is too busy enjoying his new magic legs, and Doctor Strange pulls the Sorcerer Supreme equivalent of saying "sending thoughts and prayers!"
Again - no, really.
I'm having trouble finishing this off, much like the writers had trouble finishing this storyline. Part of me wants to just throw my hands into the air like Captain America after being punched too many times by Iron Man (causing him to change his mind) and part of me wants to go into a grinding war of attrition to finish belittling every last detail of this story. It’s clear writers had some disdain for being forced to shoehorn this thing in there, creating muddled stories, conflicting information, a confusing sequence of books, and repetition (repetition repetition repetition).
Comic books can be about serious matters without being fake serious. Serious comics can be over the top. Look at Preacher, before Seth Rogan burns it to the fucking ground. Comic books can be silly AND SERIOUS works of pop art, like The Invisibles. Comic books can be Zen perfection like Maus.
Hell, just look at the simple lines and overblown stories of Strange Tales, in the Marvel milieu of the 60s, with their thick inks and single-color backgrounds - they did a lot, even while not doing much at all, because they weren't trying to be groundbreaking BIG IDEA books - they weren't trying to be cool (and believe me, The Invisibles seems like it's trying to be cool at every step, but it's just an Illuminatus! level illusion) they just went out and told big dumb stories from cover to cover - but page to page, they were filled with life.
Civil War does the opposite of the old Kirby/Lee/Ditko bombast. Those old books spent ten lines on a man you could know. Civil War books spend a hundred lines on abs and biceps to draw something you can't place. An old Fantastic Four would spend a page of dialogue that brought you up to date and into a world that, as broadbrush and obvious at it was - could be figured out on that one page. Civil War spends thousands of lines of dialogue trying to drag you one screaming inch into their world. They can't, because they want this Marvel world to be our world, and I'm not getting dragged out of this world just to be put right back in it.
Pictured: Post Horseman party.
As some of you may have guessed, I’m not a fan of culture. I like “cultures,” especially the kind made of bacteria, and of course, moldy cheese, sour beer, and tea someone left on the countertop for too long (the only good sweet tea) - but as far as culture goes, no sir, I do not like it.
So, the staff of PRF strapped me down and made me review various aspects of this shit-show. I hope you enjoy it.
BOJACK HORSEMAN
Forget, for a moment, that nobody wants to make my shows based on unpopular loser and Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. It can be called Bojack Hosemann or Delbert Horsemann, your call, NETFLIX. If you work for Netflix, and are looking for a totally sweet addition to your amazing show, then call my agent. I represent myself.
Bojack Horseman is not like most TV. Most television is like a fish kill. You see, TV shows are not sustained by life and vibrancy, but rather the fecundity of decay, the cultural and financial capital they create is held within their bloated bodies, and when they die they release this into the shallow waters around them.
Can we go further with this metaphor? I’d like to.
No? Fine. It involves a sewer of fascism. So, yeah, anyway. Bojack Horseman.
Bojack Horseman is about things. It’s about a character that does things that continue to matter throughout the show. This is one way in which I have noticed animated series have a leg up on live-action TV lately. Shows like The Venture Brothers and Bojack Horseman are always ensuring that you’re paying attention - unlike their depressing, horrifically unfunny live action counterparts, which can only reward you for not paying attention. I know you how you met my mother. Through the dark necromantic magic of PLOT BULLSHIT.
But - if you’re paying attention to a well written show like Bojack Horseman, you’ll see tiny things appear again and again, characters from episodes passed (or last season) will be written back in, the tiny things that you are about are your reward for watching the show, not your punishment. (Clearly, Arrested Development is NOT on that list) Tiny things are wrong in the background. T-shirts are weird. Character names are animal puns, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, Whale Olbermann.
Bojack Horseman is about a lot of things. It’s about depression. Ennui. Nihilism. Stuff that needs a horse-headed celebrity and a wonderful voice cast, able to pontificate at length in order to convey the way in which these high minded concepts intersect with the daily grind.
People may wonder “do you like TV at all, given the past reviews?”
I do. I like Bojack Horseman. I do like Doctor Who, too, do not misconstrue my review. Read through it anew! But Bojack is a delight. It is a dark delight at times, bringing up quotes like "I don't think I believe in 'deep down'. I think that all you are is just the things that you do." - it comes past the cheese and sleaze of most TV. It has a philosophical bent I’ve called ‘grim optimism’ or ‘optimistic nihilism.’
For instance, to quote Bojack: “You know, sometimes I feel like I was born with a leak, and any goodness I started with just slowly spilled out of me, and now it's all gone. And I'll never get it back in me. It's too late. Life is a series of closing doors, isn't it?” - touching on the way that depression and cynicism can feel. The characters in this cartoon share a lot with caricature - the exaggerations and missing parts accentuate a whole that is more than a realistic character could be.
This is the same trick of weird fiction, of fantastical satire. Bojack Horseman brings that same touch that geniuses such as Terry Pratchett could bring to fantasy novels - that making things weird, out of the ordinary, comedic, lets us be more comfortable with them than we are with a more frank discussion, lets us put our cards on the table, lets them be interpreted as the episodes play across the screen.
Like the previously reviewed Doctor Who, Bojack Horseman asks the question, “Am I a good person?” Unlike the sci-fi spectacular, there is no clear answer here. And if there was a leaning, it would be that Bojack is not. We’re charged with following his trajectory nonetheless, and it is not a cheap one nor an easy one.
Mr. Peanutbutter sums up television in one pithy quote: “The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn’t the search for meaning, it’s to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense and eventually, you’ll be dead.”
Keep watching TV, folks! May I suggest Bojack Horseman?