The Gardner Linn Fan Club

MICROFICTION | In the Morning

Wake up at 7:00. Reset alarm for 7:15. Wake up at 7:15. Reset alarm for 7:20. Wake up at 7:20. Reset alarm for 7:22. Wake up.

Shower. Wash hair, if Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday. Shave if necessary. If it's not necessary, if it's too cold outside to show your legs, if you don't have a date tonight, ignore the razor.

Shave anyway. Pay special attention to the scars on your calves; run the razor over the ridges of tissue. Go slow. See if you can feel it.

Dress. Underwear in top left drawer. Socks in top right. Shirts and skirts in closet, hanging in daily order. Friday at the front today. Lab coat on left side of closet, hanging by itself. Boots at foot of bed, one inch of toe sticking uner the frame. Left boot first, buckle, right boot, unbuckle left boot, buckle right, buckle left. Wash hands. Boots are dirty.

Rings in velvet-lined cigar box on top of chest of drawers. Put on rings in this order: ruby ring from grandmother, left pinky. Father's wedding band, right thumb. Mother's wedding band, left ring finger. Fake silver Greek-key design, souvenir from Charles's trip to Athens, right index. Pewter cow skull with red eyes, left middle finger. Silver coiling snake, right middle finger. Plastic Incredible Hulk from nephew's birthday cupcakes, left index. Watch ring, broken at 3:17, right ring finger. Jonah's high-school class of '96 ring with garnet stone, left thumb. Custom-made jointed silver sheath, right pinky.

Take off rings. Wash hands. Put rings back on, in reverse order. Put on necklace, gift from Melissa in sixth grade before she left.

Eat breakfast. Single-serving Cinnamon Toast Crunch on Fridays. Take six quarters from jar in kitchen cabinet. Backpack next to door. Leave house at 7:50. Walk to bus stop. Arrive at bus stop at 7:58. Bus arrives at 8:01. Drop six quarters in slot. Sit in third seat from back on left. If seat is occupied, third seat from back on right. If that seat is occupied, seat directly behind driver. If that seat is occupied, stand. Hold grab bar with right hand.

What to do if you see something interesting on the bus: Ignore it. You imagined the twitch in the man's left ring finger. Nothing interesting happens on the bus.

Bus arrives at University stop at 8:19. Wait until you are next-to-last person to get off. Step from bus to sidewalk with left foot first. Walk around quad to Boyd Hall; do not take sidewalks on diagonals.

"Hey!"

Ignore all outside distractions. Those you would like to speak to know your name.

"Excuse me! Ma'am?"

Ignore it.

"Doctor? I saw you on the bus. I've got a question--"

Ignore it. You can't afford the disruption.

posted by Gardner at 12:07 AM |

Internet Quizzes: Scarily Accurate

You're The Sound and the Fury!

by William Faulkner

Strong-willed but deeply confused, you are trying to come to grips
with a major crisis in your life. You can see many different perspectives on the issue,
but you're mostly overwhelmed with despair at what you've lost. People often have a hard
time understanding you, but they have some vague sense that you must be brilliant
anyway. Ultimately, you signify nothing.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Why are internet quizzes so fascinating? I'm addicted to the damn things. They're worthless, they get passed around message boards and blogs like 24-hour herpes--but I CAN'T. STOP. TAKING THEM. I love internet quizzes like a fat kid loves cake. Like I love cake, even.

Link via Largehearted Boy.
posted by Gardner at 2:24 AM |

posted by Gardner at 12:22 AM |

SPINE | There's a Starman, Waiting in the Sky

Part 3 of Notes toward a Better Superhero is going to have to wait a few weeks, because between work and...more work, I just don't have the time to devote to making the sufficiently cogent arguments I want to make.

But in the interim I'll talk about a related topic: Starman by James Robinson and Tony Harris. Chris gently chided me in last week's comments for extolling the virtues of the finite longform superhero series without having read Starman, the premiere finite longform superhero series. Starman ran for 80 issues, along with a double handful of specials and miniseries; it was one of the few mainstream superhero series that was allowed to end at the creator's discretion. I recently read Starman: Sins of the Father, which collects Starman #1-5 and the introductory #0 issue. In it, we meet antique dealer Jack Knight, younger son of Ted Knight, who used to defend Opal City as the costumed hero Starman. Ted has retired from the superhero game, but Jack's older brother David carries on the family legacy with the Starman costume and flight-enabling Cosmic Rod (aka Gravity Rod). We're barely into the book when David is shot and killed by Kyle, son of supervillain The Mist; soon both Ted and Jack are attacked as well. The Mist thinks Kyle has killed Jack, but he survives, and Ted tells his son to leave town while he still has a chance. But Jack, though he earlier ridiculed the Starman costume and legacy, cannot leave his father to The Mist's plans; he reluctantly takes up the Starman mantle and sets about avenging his brother's death. By the end of the book he has comes to terms, more or less, with his feelings toward both his family and their legacy of superheroism.

Because of its unique status in the superhero world, Starman holds a place of high esteem--but based on this first collection, it's not entirely warranted. James Robinson is a better-than-average superhero writer, but he's still given to overwrought narration ("The shadowy, shadowy gentleman closes his journal. For now, he's written enough. He sighs again and drains his glass and ponders if he should pour another...or take the late, late, late night air. To see firsthand...how bad it is on Opal City's streets. His city. His home.") and cliched dialogue like "Bastard! You killed my brother!" There's some clunky plotting, as when Jack stumbles into a fortune teller's shop to hide out and ends up on the receiving end of a very awkward and out-of-place prophecy. Harris's art is capable, and certainly more striking than the usual superhero fare, but he has done nothing but grow as an artist in the ten years since these comics were first published. And when you reduce Sins of the Father down to its core, you get "wayward son learns he's more like his father than he thought."

But there's still plenty of spark left in a story as oft-used as that one, and Sins of the Father indicates that Starman has plenty of potential to go in interesting directions in subsequent books. As Madman creator Mike Allred notes in his introduction, making Jack Knight a junk dealer was a masterstroke on Robinson's part. He's obsessed with the past, with the trivial artifacts that people leave behind which acquire significance through sheer virtue of being old. Even Jack's Starman costume is made up of junk--an old leather jacket, WWII anti-flare goggles, and a sherriff's badge from a Crackerjack box. Robinson doesn't overplay the analogy, but it's there--Jack Knight, Starman and antiques collector, is very much like Starman, a comic book deeply rooted in the history of the DC Universe, a history of trivial, often silly moments that gain significance simply by being part of the continuity. The Starman legacy is the one artifact that Jack hasn't embraced--the one artifact he actively ridicules--but as David notes early on, "Everything old and cool I had in my past. My childhood things. Jack always ends up taking them." Jack substitutes this obsession with things for a real relationship with his father and brother, but in the end, he ends up taking his brother's Starman mantle just as he'd taken his Big Little Books.

The four-part "Sins of the Father" story takes up two-thirds of this collection, and it's the obligatory origin story, the familiar first steps on the Hero's Journey. Jack is an appealingly abrasive character from the start, and the family dynamics feel real and personal, but The Mist's grand plan and all the soliloquizing about what it means to be a hero confuse and grate, respectively. More interesting are the two short stories that round out the book. "A Day in the Opal" occasionally reads like warmed-over Alan Moore--not coincidentally, Robinson wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen--but it goes a long way toward establishing Opal City as a character in itself, and it's bookended by a very amusing idea about a Hawaiian shirt that contains a portal to other worlds. The final story, "Talking with David, '95," lets Jack and the late David work out their issues in a sort of metaphysical graveyard. It's both the best showcase of Harris's art and Gregory Wright's colors--it's all in greytones, except for the four-color David--and a suprisingly brutal and honest look at sibling rivalry that uses a superhero slugfest as an effective metaphor for something other than Good vs. Evil. It's a superhero story that engages superheroes on their own terms, without shoehorning them into other genres, and reveals facets of the genre that were previously untapped. It shows the potential that still exists in superhero comics, and makes me interested in reading the second Starman collection, despite the lackluster opening story arc.

Better Superheroes

While I'm collecting my thoughts on the subject, other bloggers are having a discussion about the uses of superheroes, and it's been fascinating reading. It started with David Fiore's response to Tim O'Neil's review of Grant Morrison's The Filth in The Comics Journal #258, it continued with O'Neil (if this link doesn't take you directly to his reply, it's the post dated February 22), and was then joined by Sean T. Collins, Fiore again, and Jim Henley. Really interesting stuff, if you're inclined to read a lot of theorizing about superheroes.
posted by Gardner at 12:37 AM |

Happy Grey Tuesday

You may notice that the normal GLFC logo is a little greyer today; that's because it's Grey Tuesday, an organized online protest in support of DJ Danger Mouse's newest project, The Grey Album. TGA combines the vocal tracks from Jay-Z's Black Album with tracks made entirely of samples from the Beatles' White Album. As you can imagine, the legality of such a thing is a little grey itself, and EMI (the Beatles' record company) has sent cease-and-desist letters to stores that carry the CD and websites that host it. Grey Tuesday is an effort to strike a blow against the record companies in support of artists like Danger Mouse, who repurpose existing work for new, challenging projects like The Grey Album.

Me, I'm not sure where I stand on the legal issue here, so I'm not hosting the album on the GLFC. I'm just calling attention to the protest, and to Danger Mouse himself. I knew DM back when he was my Resident Assistant my freshman year of college, and though we were never close friends, we shared similar tastes in music, and I admired the dedication he showed to his own music. I interviewed him a couple of years ago for the UGA newspaper before he left for London, and it's great to see that he's getting so much recognition now, both for the The Grey Album and his 2003 release with rapper Jemini, Ghetto Pop Life, which you should all rush out and buy right now. The Grey Album is surely some kind of masterpiece--even when the tracks don't quite work, it's always a fascinating experiment, and the ones that do work work amazingly well--but Ghetto Pop Life is the album that proves DM is going to be a force in hip-hop for years to come.

GreyTuesday.org -- All you need to know about Grey Tuesday, The Grey Album, and how to get your own copy.

Danger Mouse's website - Includes a free MP3 of "The Only One" from Ghetto Pop Life.
posted by Gardner at 6:58 AM |

This will be funny to exactly two of you--but for you two, it's hilarious.
posted by Gardner at 12:47 PM |

For the transplanted Southerners in the audience:

The "Yankee or Dixie?" Quiz

I was a little surprised to see that I scored 83%, which places me squarely in the "Dixie" category, since I get "You're from Georgia? But you don't have an accent" just as much as I get "Where are you from? I love your accent."
posted by Gardner at 1:50 AM |

SPEAKER | Shake It Till Yr Ass Falls Off

Over on the GLFC forum we've got a little mix-CD-swapping group going. Every month one member picks a theme, and we all make CDs and trade 'em around. February's theme, thanks to Will, is "songs that make you move"--party music. My single-CD dance mix quickly ballooned to an epic, 1975-sized double-album extravaganza, and there still wasn't room for everything I wanted to put on it. So this week's MP3s are a few tracks that didn't make it onto my discs, but are still worth listening/shaking it like a Polaroid picture to.

"Feeling So Real" by Moby
From the Mobester's 1995 disc Everything Is Wrong, which was supposed to be the album that catapulted him to mainstream success and made him the first electronica (remember that word?) rock star. It didn't; it wasn't until 1999's ubiquitous Play that Moby discovered the golden formula of "blues samples + Gwen Stefani + licensing music for use in commercials = the big bucks." But Everything Is Wrong is at least as good an album as Play, and though they both suffer the same second-half lag, EIW relies less on formula and showcases a greater range and risk of experimentation on Moby's part.

I don't know enough about dance music to tell you what specific subcategory "Feeling So Real" goes in, whether it's trance or house or techno or what, but I can tell you that it'll get you moving to a ridiculous degree--it's so fast it's almost undanceable. It's all in that bassline, constantly rising and backing away, like a wave: relentless. And like the best dance songs, it turns a one-line lyric into something almost profound, at least in the context of the music, which strikes that perfect balance between joy and melancholy: joy for the present, melancholy for the present's inevitable end.

"Koochy" by Armand Van Helden, from Killing Puritans
I was either going to use this or Gary Numan's "Cars," which it samples, for the "dance like a robot" portion of the disc, but the original won out for a variety of reasons--"Koochy"'s overlong intro and inane/disgusting lyrics, to name two--but mainly because "Koochy" never completes the familiar "Cars" riff. It uses and abuses the anticipatory first half of the riff for over eight minutes, but never gives closure to the musical thought. If you're at all familiar with "Cars," by the end of "Koochy" you're dying to hear that "dernt-nah-nernt," and Van Helden's refusal to give it to you makes this song almost maddening. All buildup, no release.

"Comin' Round (long version)" by Bubba Sparxxx
Apparently this was on the pre-release version of Deliverance, but was replaced on the final album by a truncated, Missy-less reworking. This version is more fun, as its fiddle-hop outro segues into a bit of Missy Elliott's "Work It"--an earlier hit from Timbaland, Bubba's producer of choice. The addition of "Work It" gives the song more of a joyful party vibe, but I just couldn't find a place for its lazy back-porch hip-hop on my mix, even when it segued into Dsico's "Work It"/"Heart of Glass" mashup.

"Hold On, I'm Comin'" by Reuben Wilson
Fluxblog posted this a while ago, but it's no longer available there, so I thought I'd post it here because you have to hear this. This cover of Sam & Dave's classic is from jazz organist Wilson's Love Bug album, and it's just compulsively danceable and sort of nerdily funky. It didn't fit in with the overall groove of my discs, but if you play this at a party and people don't start dancing, you need better friends.

And, in case you were interested, the full tracklisting of Gardner's Awesome Party Mix Vol. 1 & 2:

Disc One: Shake Ya Ass

1. Got to Give It Up (Part 1) - Marvin Gaye
2. Kiss - Prince
3. Funky Stuff - Lizzy Mercier Descloux
4. Change Clothes (Grey Album version) - Jay-Z vs. Danger Mouse
5. Crazy in Love (Vanessa Wu mix) - Beyonce
6. Pump It Up - Joe Budden
7. Stand Up - Ludacris
8. Better Than Yours (Two-Handed Engine mix) - Kanye West & Common vs. Kelis
9. Fix Up, Look Sharp - Dizzee Rascal
10. Truth or Dare - N.E.R.D. feat. Kelis & Pusha T.
11. Twang - Nappy Roots
12. At the Party - Northern State
13. Pass That Dutch (Pistol Pete remix) - Missy Elliott
14. Monstertruckdriver - T. Raumschmiere
15. In da Club (Electro 101 mix) - 50 Cent vs. Dsico
16. Cars - Gary Numan
17. Discotraxx - Ladytron
18. Agenda Suicide - The Faint
19. Deceptacon - Le Tigre
20. Out of the Races and onto the Tracks - The Rapture
21. Hey Ya! (Two-Handed Engine mix) - Outkast vs. The Blankket

Disc Two: Show Me What You're Working With

1. Blister in the Sun - Violent Femmes
2. Centerfold - J. Geils Band
3. Any Way You Want It - Journey
4. I Believe in a Thing Called Love - The Darkness
5. Improper Dancing - Electric Six
6. (I Am) Oozing Emotion - The Chap
7. Kill All DJs - Beats for Beginners
8. Astounded - Bran Van 3000
9. Get Low (Merengue Mix) - Lil' Jon
10. Galang - MIA
11. Youth Alcoholic - Fox and Wolf
12. Move Your Feet - Junior Senior
13. My Gigolo vs. I Wish vs. Cannonball - 2 Many DJs
14. Where's Your Head At - Basement Jaxx
15. Burning Down - Tiga
16. Finest Dreams - Richard X feat. Kelis
17. I Begin to Wonder (Dead or Alive remix) - Dannii Minogue
18. Let the Poison Spill from Your Throat (Tommie Sunshine remix) - The Faint
19. Such Great Heights - The Postal Service
20. 99 Luftballoons - Nena

If you'd like to join the swap-o-rama for March, go here and say "yes."

Special note for LA-area Gardner Linn Fans: We finally have a decent "indy alternative" radio station: 103.1 FM. Their playlists aren't as far-ranging and forward-thinking as KCRW's, but unlike KCRW, they do actually deign to play music occasionally. And they're so much better than KROQ it's not even funny. In two days of listening, I've heard such gems as Bran Van 3000's "Drinking in LA," a mashup of Madonna's "Music" and the Sex Pistols' "Submission," a cover of Big Star's "Kanga Roo" not by Jeff Buckley, and Interpol and Joy Division within three songs of each other. Well worth checking out.

(MP3 disclaimer: All MP3s offered on this site are for evaluation purposes only--i.e. download them, listen to them, decide whether you would like to purchase the music from a friendly retailer, and then delete them. All MP3s will be available for one week after they are posted. If you are an artist or represent an artist or label whose music appears here, and you would like your music removed, just let me know.)
posted by Gardner at 12:26 AM |

MICROFICTION | Rings on Her Fingers

Finding the doctor turned out to be much more difficult than George had anticipated. And though George was sure he could do the procedure (he always called it "the procedure," feeling that this clinical word would lend a legitimacy to the whole thing that he still, sometimes, wasn't sure it warranted) himself, given the right implements and enough painkillers and possibly a refresher sewing course, he wanted the swift, sure hand of a professional. He wanted this to go as smoothly as possible, with no unpleasant side effects. For though, George thought, he was a trailblazer and maybe just a little crazy, he was no fool.

George tried subterfuge at first, but that proved unworkable; really, who gets gangrene in 2004? After a few false starts, he settled on the direct approach, but that came with its own difficulties. "I'm looking for someone to amputate a finger" is enough to give even the most jaded physician pause, and the board-certified professionals at the top of George's list thought it nothing more than a sick, unamusing joke. George pressed the doctors for personal interviews; if they could just look him in the eyes and see how serious he was, he said, they would know that this was just as much a matter of life and death as any transplant or angioplasty. But no, the doctors said, we don't do this sort of thing, and more than one added, with smug grins George could detect even over the phone, "I'm sure your insurance doesn't cover this kind of procedure."

When George had exhausted every legitimate M.D. in the city, his left ring finger began to twitch. It knew it was time, George thought; he could feel it straining, pulling away from his hand. It already felt like a phantom digit to him. Though George had been married to Kate for only two months, it was long enough for him to know he never wanted to do that again, but he didn't choose the ring finger for purely symbolic reasons; George was, above all, practical. The thumb was for grasping, the index for pointing, the middle for expressing displeasure. The pinky provided balance. The ring finger was the only useless one in the bunch. And it wanted to go.

George found his doctor on a Friday morning in February. His car was in the shop--the transmission had finally given out after two years' worth of threats--so he took the bus to his job at the drugstore. George had never ridden the city buses, due to a bad mental association with the smell of diesel exhaust, but he understood that eye contact was discouraged, if not forbidden. So he found himself staring at the hem of a white lab coat, the kind worn by scientists and technicians. And doctors. Below the hem of the coat were huge black leather boots, embellished with more buckles than were practical or necessary. And thought the coat was long and the boots high, neither covered the pairs of criss-crossing burn scars, X-shaped ridges on the wearer's calves.

George looked up, saw a thick anatomy textbook, saw tiny hands studded with rings on every finger, saw a spike of black ink protruding from the sleeve of the lab coat. He saw a candy necklace, preserved in glossy black lacquer. He saw her face, and saw what she was staring at: his twitching left ring finger.

Later, George would realize how stupid he'd been--the University was right on his way to work, and it was filled with aspiring doctors who hadn't yet developed the obstinacy and old-fashioned ways of thinking that had stymied him so far. Later, Rachel would try to give him the anesthetic, and he would say no, he wants to feel this. Later, just before passing out, he would know that the metallic, protesting whine of a saw tearing through flesh and bone is the sound of love.

But on the bus, as his finger jerked and twitched under the student's gaze, George knew only that he was going to be all right. Soon everything would be right.
posted by Gardner at 1:49 AM |

posted by Gardner at 12:06 AM |

While we're talking about comics...

Astonishing X-Men #1 by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday, coming in May.

While Whedon and Cassaday doing the X-Men is a step in the right direction, the return to those old costumes is about seventeen steps in the wrong direction. There's a reason Wolverine's line about "yellow spandex" got a huge laugh in the first X-Men movie: that outfit is ridiculous, and it looks even more ridiculous after three years of this:

Marvel sure seems to be regressing, and it's probably because they haven't been reading the GLFC...More on costumes in next week's SPINE.
posted by Gardner at 5:23 PM |

SPINE | Notes toward a Better Superhero, Part 2: Form

In which we apply what we learned in Part 1 and try to come up with a couple of guidelines for creating this theoretical Better Superhero Comic Book, starting with the ways in which stories can be told.

1. Story
As noted in Part 1, this is the overriding concern. We don't need any more costumed characters, more "entertainment properties," ready to be shoehorned into whatever story your hired hands want to tell; we need stories and characters that are dependent on each other. Don't create WombatMan and say "Okay, now who should WombatMan fight this issue?" Wombatman should be part of a story. And stories have beginnings, middles and ends. Most superheroes have an origin, which serves as a beginning, and then decades (if they're popular) of middle. (In the rare instances when a superhero story actually has an ending, that ending is usually death. I would like to point out that death is not necessarily--is rarely, in fact--the best ending. And in superhero comics, death is rarely the end.) A story gives a character purpose, which few of the classic superheroes have. If you're creating WombatMan in the hopes that he'll become an icon like Batman or Superman, that he'll be published continually for sixty years, that he'll spin off into every medium known to man: Don't. We already have Batman and Superman. And Spider-Man and the X-Men and Green Lantern. We don't need more crimefighters or galactic champions. We need more stories. Everything else on this list comes directly from this first directive: tell a story.

2. Format
The graphic novel is a wonderful thing, though few "graphic novels" are deserving of the term; most are novellas at best. The format I think works best for genre adventure comics, however, is the finite longform series. Something like Preacher or Sandman or The Invisibles: a series of sixty or more issues, published monthly (or otherwise) over a span of a few years. Serial storytelling is one of the things comics do best; it's one of the things comics offer that other storytelling media don't. A longform series allows the reader to enter the world of the story, to even become immersed in it, in a way that's usually not possible with film or prose. Long-running TV shows come close, but there are subtle differences, mainly in the unlimited budget of comics and the different storytelling options comics offer.

There are a few great, relatively short superhero graphic novels, notably Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (the perennial standardbearers of "Pow! Zam! Comics aren't just for kids anymore!"). But it's worth noting that both books were originally published serially, and the experience of reading Watchmen monthly over the course of a year must have been much different from reading it all under one cover; the 30-day wait for the final chapter after issue #11's cliffhanger must have been excruciating for the reader in 1986. That anticipation is as much a tool of the serial comics creator as the word processor and crowquill pen.

And "serial storytelling" doesn't always mean the issues have to be in chronological order, with cliffhangers at the end of each one and flashbacks clearly delineated; if you've got a story and you know where it's going, you can play around a bit with the single-issue format. For the series I'm working on, I think of each issue less as an episode of a TV show than as a chapter of a really long, Infinite Jest-style novel, in which the chapters aren't in chronological order and the ending isn't really the end. Again I refer back to The Invisibles, in particular the issue that focused on an anonymous enemy soldier who was killed by hero King Mob in a previous issue. This issue jumped back in time and showed us this soldier's life, made him into a real person, and came at the perfect point in the series--it provided a break in the ongoing story while reinforcing the increasingly important idea that the two opposing sides in the war were really the same side.

(Speaking of Infinite Jest, I would love to see a comic that incorporated David Foster Wallace's footnote/endnote style. Footnotes have long been a part of superhero comics, usually in the "See ish 347 for the pulse-pounding details! -Ed." manner, but I think there are interesting things to be done with footnotes that play a more central role in the narrative. Or a Rime of the Ancient Mariner-style gloss, for that matter.)

3. The Language of Comics
A major trend in mainstream superhero comics in the last few years has been to make the comics more "cinematic." This usually means bigger panels, fewer (or zero) captions, and snappier dialogue. But while this has resulted in some excellent comics (Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch's Authority, Mark Millar and Hitch's Ultimates, and much of Brian Michael Bendis's work), it has also resulted in many mediocre comics that simply mimic the eye candy of a Bruckheimer flick while ignoring the unique storytelling possibilities of comics. Comics don't need to be "movies on paper," nor do they need to be illustrated novels; they can just be comics. Take a look at Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen or Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, and you'll see pages full of storytelling that would be difficult, if not impossible, to duplicate in another medium. And take a look at Ang Lee's Hulk movie to see how difficult it is to translate the most basic elements of comics storytelling to film. There is so much potential in the juxtaposition of images with words and other images, and in the structure of a comics page (I consider the page the fundamental element of comics; it's like a line of poetry, in that it both stands alone and affects/is affected by what comes before and after it--and unlike prose writers, comics creators can determine exactly how much story is contained on each page) that is not being explored by most superhero comics today. Or if you're going to emulate movies, go for something more difficult than out-exploding Michael Bay. Look at the compositions of Wes Anderson or Stanley Kubrick, or the editing in a Steven Soderbergh movie, and see how those techniques can be applied to comics. Or take inspiration from music--Warren Ellis has written about his attempts to emulate the Pixies' soft-to-loud dynamics on the comics page, and I've got my own ideas inspired by the remixes and mashups of the DJ scene.

4. Design
Most superhero comics covers suck. Either they're just pinups of the title character with no relation to the story, or they're shots of heroes and villains engaged in grimacing contests, or they're gratuitious T&A shots. And the logos and indicia are huge and ugly and the whole effect is to make comics seem as dull and stupid as everyone thinks they are (and which, frankly, most comics are). But better superheroes demand better covers, and better covers demand inspiration from sources other than issues of Green Lantern from 1965. The covers of Wildcats Version 3.0, illustrated by Dustin Nguyen and designed by Rian Hughes, draw inspiration from advertising and corporate literature. Grant Morrison's The Filth (which, like Morrison's The Invisibles, was a superhero book in disguise) featured stunning covers by Carlos Segura that looked like diagrams from a biology textbook written by someone as clearly insane as Morrison himself. John Cassaday's Planetary covers are gorgeous, but almost all of them are pastiches of old comics or pulp covers or movie posters--appropriate for Planetary, but overused by lesser imitators. (The possibilities and problems of pastiche will be dealt with shortly.)

A comic book's cover is often its only advertisement, and it needs to be as simple and effective as a good ad. It needs to indicate what the book is about and stand out from the nearly identical covers of other comics crowding the racks. The covers to Wildcats, The Filth and Planetary do this, but very few other superhero books have followed their lead.

That's about it for the "form" part of this discussion. Next week we'll look at the content: the characteristics that define superhero stories, whether those characteristics still have value, and how they can be utilized in a modern, mature artform.

(N.B. I realize that some of what I'm saying above, particularly with regard to covers, isn't anything new; I'm just trying to get all these ideas down in one place. I don't intend for these to be hard and fast guidelines, either. My hope is that these ideas can spark discussion.)
posted by Gardner at 5:53 AM |

SPEAKER | Trying to be cool, you look like a fool to me

One of my recent musical obsessions has been unexpected/inappropriate covers--mostly, covers of teen-pop or R&B songs by stuffy Brits or too-cool-for-school indie rockers. (Recent favorites include Macha and Bedhead's cover of Cher's "Believe," Travis's take on Britney Spears's "...Baby One More Time," Snow Patrol's live version of Beyonce's "Crazy in Love," complete with wack Scottish rapping, Clem Snide's understated cover of Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful," and today's MP3s: Richard Thompson doing Britney's "Oops! I Did It Again" and Death Cab for Cutie/Postal Service frontman Ben Gibbard's cover of Avril Lavigne's "Complicated.") Covering a teen-pop song allows the "serious artist" to walk the line between irony and sincerity: notice how Thompson's audience is laughing during the first chorus of "Oops," congratulating themselves on getting Thompson's joke--but by the second chorus, they're not laughing anymore. Thompson's sparse arrangement and technical proficiency (Swiss-precision machine-tooled beats don't easily lend themselves to acoustic guitar) highlight the song's solid structure and the desperate, passive-aggressive lyrics. Teen-pop songs are rarely deep, but at their best they derive their power from their simplicity and directness, qualities which both Thompson's "Oops!" and Gibbard's "Complicated" bring to the fore. Gibbard may gently mock the song "by a seventeen-year-old girl," but his earnest performance, in divorcing the song from its manufactured, skinny-tie, faux-grrl-power context, makes plain what all those seventeen-year-old girls heard in the song in the first place.

(For perhaps obvious reasons, this rarely works the other way. Teen-pop covers of songs by old white guys are usually wan imitations of the originals. Mandy Moore's cover of XTC's "Senses Working Overtime" is fun, but hardly revealing of anything other than good taste on Mandy's producers' part, and the less said about Britney's "Satisfaction" the better.)

"Oops! I Did It Again" by Richard Thompson (from Thompson's album 1000 Years of Popular Music, which also includes a great cover of Prince's "Kiss") (DELETED)

"Complicated" by Ben Gibbard (live performance, but I highly recommend The Postal Service's Give Up if you want to hear more from Gibbard) (DELETED)

(MP3 disclaimer: All MP3s offered on this site are for evaluation purposes only--i.e. download them, listen to them, decide whether you would like to purchase the music from a friendly retailer, and then delete them. All MP3s will be available for one week after they are posted. If you are an artist or represent an artist or label whose music appears here, and you would like your music removed, just let me know.)
posted by Gardner at 1:53 AM |

Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat!

As promised, a preview MP3: "Bantams in Pine-Woods" by Wallace Stevens, read by the poet.

Aside from the intricate wordplay (which is extremely funny, subtly suggestive and working toward a purpose beyond being simply clever--qualities lacking in so much poetry that trades in similar juggling of the language--as well as recalling the best MCs, with the first stanza's multiple internal rhymes), what I like best about "Bantams in Pine-Woods" is its third stanza, which combines that wordplay with the kind of tossed-off, almost casual philosophical manifesto that one finds throughout Stevens's poetry:

Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal.
Your world is you. I am my world.

(From the book/CD combo Poetry Speaks, edited by Elise Paschen and Rebekah Presson Mosby. If you have trouble downloading the MP3, let me know ASAP.) (DELETED)
posted by Gardner at 1:13 AM |

All New, All Different

The most frequent comment I get from visitors about the Gardner Linn Fan Club is that it's "comprehensive." Which, of course, is another way of saying it's unfocused. It's gone from being a Die Puny Humans-inspired research stack to a comics-and-short-fiction collection to whatever it is today, the only constant being my egomania. So now, nearly a year after I started it, I want to give the GLFC some sort of focus.

But that doesn't mean losing the comprehensiveness; I'm a dilettante in many fields, so the GLFC is going to reflect that. But I also work best when I have some clear purpose and, most importantly, a deadline, so I'm instituting some self-imposed order that is going to take effect Monday of next week.

MONDAY: SPEAKER: On Monday of every week, I am going to write about music. It may be long, it may be short, it may be about a song or an album or a band or a concert, but it will be about music. And it will be accompanied by an MP3 for you to download and enjoy. (MP3 disclaimer: All MP3s offered on this site are for evaluation purposes only--i.e. download them, listen to them, decide whether you would like to purchase the music from a friendly retailer, and then delete them. All MP3s will be available for one week after they are posted. If you are an artist or represent an artist or label whose music appears here, and you would like your music removed, just let me know.)

WEDNESDAY: SPINE: On Wednesdays I'm going to write about comics and/or books without the purty pitchers. May be long, may be short, etc. etc. But no MP3s.

THURSDAY: THE ADVENTURES OF LIL' GARDNER & ROBOT JESUS Yes, that's right, a new adventure every Thursday. It's been far too long.

FRIDAY: MICROFICTION A new short-short story every Friday.

I'll still be posting random interesting tidbits in my usual haphazard way, but now you can be guaranteed new stuff to read four days a week. Check back here Monday for the start of this grand new adventure in blogging, and be sure to post comments to let me know what you think.

(And if you come back before Monday, you'll find a little preview MP3.)
posted by Gardner at 7:56 PM |

Notes Toward a Better Superhero: Unfocused Musings

My friend Chris and I have, for the past two and a half years, been writing a superhero comic book. For various reasons (the distance between Georgia and California, our increasingly time-consuming jobs, our inability to find an artist), this comic book has yet to see the light of day. But recently I've been thinking about this comic book, about superheroes in general, and about our intent to make our comic different from the dozens of other superhero comics being published today. And this thinking led to a few questions: Is there a way to do a substantively different superhero comic? What constitutes a "superhero" comic anyway? And why are superhero comics stuck in such a rut?

(A common and wide-ranging debate in comic-book circles concerns the dominance of superheroes over all other genres on the comics racks, often to the point that some stores carry nothing but superhero comics. While I agree that there is a glut of superhero comics, and that a healthy future for comics lies in the diversification of the types of stories comics tell, I do not believe that superhero comics are intrinsically bad, either as art [though many of them are] or as an economic force. I believe that the superhero story is a viable genre, in which many good works and a few great works have been produced, and in which there is still much untapped potential; furthermore, I believe that superhero stories and comic books are uniquely suited to each other, in the same way that rock 'n roll and the guitar-bass-drums combo are uniquely suited to each other. You can play Bach on a Strat, and you can play Hendrix with a string quartet, but it just ain't the same.)

But first things first: What is a superhero? We all know that: it's a guy who gains some amazing power, usually accidentally; undergoes some trauma at an early age, usually the death of a father or father figure; decides that with his great power must come great responsibility; makes a costume, adopts a codename and secret identity, and goes out on the street to fight crime and an array of outlandish villains. With minor variations, this is the template for Superman, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Batman, and a host of others. Other characters--notably the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men--have different origins, but the tropes remain the same: the costumes, the accidental acquisition of powers, the decision to use those powers for the greater good, and the villains whose sole purpose seems to be to give the heroes something to fight. That is the superhero as it is commonly understood. That is the rather specific basis for a genre that has lasted over sixty years now.

But superpowered heroes are nothing new--they are, in fact, quite old. Samson, Hercules, Gilgamesh, Rama, Beowulf; these guys are all superheroes without the tropes of the comic-book superhero genre. Science fiction and fantasy novels are full of people with amazing powers who don't wear colorful spandex costumes. Harry Potter is a superhero. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a superhero. Neo, Morpheus and Trinity are superheroes. So why isn't The Matrix considered a superhero movie?

It comes down to those familiar tropes. A fantasy story is one with elves and wizards and dragons. A sci-fi story is one with spaceships and aliens and robots. And a superhero story is one with costumes, secret identities and comforting black-and-white morality.* At least in the public eye; there are plenty of fantasy stories without the Tokien trappings, and there are plenty of superhero comics that are offering different takes on the genre. But they might not be as different as the seem at first.

The big movement in superhero comics over the last few years seems to have been "superhero comics that aren't really superhero comics." There are two main approaches to this trend. The first is to imagine what would happen if there really were superpowered people in the "real world." What this usually boils down to is the superpowered people being exploited as living weapons by the government. Alan Moore's Watchmen and Warren Ellis' Stormwatch had elements of this approach; at the moment, Marvel's Supreme Power, written by J. Michael Straczynski and illustrated by Gary Frank, is exploring the notion of superpowers in the real world by casting the Justice League in the most cynical light possible. Hyperion, the Superman analogue, was raised by spies and brainwashed to be a perfect weapon for America; Batman manque Nighthawk's parents were lynched by the KKK, etc. It's a good series, certainly more thought-provoking and mature than most superhero fare, but it can't escape the old tropes. Costumes are costumes, even ones as well-designed and realistic as the ones Hyperion and Nighthawk wear.

The other approach is to accept the usual tropes of superhero comics as a given, and tell different kinds of stories within that absurd milieu. Brian Michael Bendis's Alias, about a private eye in the Marvel universe, and Powers, about homicide cops investigating superhero murders, take this route. Both use spandex-clad superheroes as occasional punchlines and explore the kinky psychosexual side of those heroes; but Bendis is also using both books to examine just what superheroes mean in the larger culture. Recent issues of Powers, in particular, have been a fascinating dissertation on the familiar superhero tropes and why they have such a hold over the audience. Though most of Marvel's attempts to mimic Bendis' style and success by shoehorning superheroes into other genres have failed, the superheroes-but-not-really books of the Wildstorm universe have been notable successes: Wildcats Version 3.0 (superhero runs a multinational corporation), Stormwatch: Team Achilles (UN strike force hunts down rogue superpowered beings), Sleeper (secret agent goes undercover in a supervillain cabal), and the 800-pound gorilla of deconstructionist superhero epics, Warren Ellis's Planetary ("mystery archaeologists" excavate the secret pop-culture history of the 20th century while battling an evil Fantastic Four). But even when these books are at their best, the reader still has to be prepared to accept the appearance of a guy in a cape and a mask next to, say, a scene in which a drunk, desperate P.I. lets a friend fuck her just so she can feel something. Bendis and the Wildstorm writers are talented enough that the disconnect is minimal, but it's still there. And these books are still playing off the old tropes, even if it's to point out how silly they are.

So is there a way to write a truly different superhero comic? I think there is, and the answer is present in Supreme Power and Watchmen and Powers, but not much mention is ever made of it: it's the story. We all know what a story is, right? Beginning, middle and end? A story is what gives characters purpose; it gives them something to work for, to work toward. Superman has no story. Spider-Man has no story. Sure, stories are told using those characters, but Superman will go on forever. There is no end, so therefore there is no story. Batman's war on crime will be as endless as the war on terrorism. It can never be won, but it can never be lost either. Watchmen, on the other hand, is a finite story. Alias is a finite story. Ellis' Stormwatch was finite. Powers and Supreme Power give the impression that they are building toward an ending. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is finite. Harry Potter will have an ending. Even The Matrix had a story, no matter how dumb that story turned out to be. Neo wasn't just fighting against something; he was fighting for something. Most importantly, he was fighting for something that could be achieved: freedom from the Matrix. What are Superman and Spider-Man fighting for? Can they ever achieve it?

The best superhero comic of the last ten years is something that most people don't even consider a superhero comic: Grant Morrison's The Invisibles. It's a longform, finite, deeply personal story about anarchic cells fighting against an oppressive extradimensional regime. Look closely and you can see the superhero underpinnings: constumes and codenames. But the layered, intertextual and metafictional storytelling is the complete opposite of most superhero comics, as is the style, wit and intelligence of the characters. The Invisibles points a way toward a better superhero comic, but so far, no one has followed its lead.

*There are two kinds of comic-book superheroes: those who have a moral code against killing (Batman, Spider-Man, et al), and those who kill when necessary (Wolverine, most nouveau heroes). It's interesting to see how these different kinds of characters translate to film or TV. Wolverine fits right in amongst the action heroes of Bruckheimerian shoot-em-ups, who take target practice at generic evil henchmen. But the moral code of a Batman or Superman doesn't go over so well with the mass audience. Every so often in the comics, Batman is faced with a dilemma: should he kill the Joker to prevent the deaths of yet more innocent people? Is the Joker's latest killing spree the last straw? It usually gets to the point where Batman has his hands around the Joker's neck, ready to end it once and for all, when an overwrought caption pops up, usually to the effect of "If I kill him, I'm no better than he is." And the Joker lives to kill again.

That bullshit doesn't fly at the Cineplex. The Joker has to die for the audience to be satisfied. And yet Batman can't kill him--what to do? Accidental death to the rescue! In Tim Burton's Batman, the Joker falls from the bell tower, but when Batman tries to save him, the Joker lets go, falling to his death. In the Spider-Man movie, Peter Parker corners his uncle's killer and seems about to kill him when the hapless criminal trips over a pipe and falls out a window. Thus we're able to take satisfaction in the vengeance of Uncle Ben's death without having to see Peter murder someone. Two of the first four episodes of Smallville end with Clark Kent watching the villain-of-the-week accidentally kill himself. In that way the hero's conscience remains squeaky-clean, while our guilty bloodlust is slaked.

posted by Gardner at 7:42 PM |

The comment system is now in place. You may share your own thoughts on my ramblings by clicking the "comment" button below each post.

-G
posted by Gardner at 7:31 PM |

Why I Hate the Radio #487 (specifically, Why I Hate KROQ #17 Katrillion), or Why I Am This Close to Buying an iPod

I happened to catch a few moments of KROQ, aka LA's answer to a question nobody asked ("Dude, like, what if a radio station played Sublime all day long?") while flipping over a tape, and boy, was I lucky I did--I was just in time to discover that KROQ's corporate masters have deemed Jay-Z's phenomenal single "99 Problems" suitable for its audience. This was all relayed to me by a DJ (don't know which one, because all of KROQ's DJs sound exactly alike, except for Jed the Fish, who sounds even more alike than the others) in the incredulous tones you would have expected him to reserve for the announcement that KROQ had decided to play, I don't know, some Tuvalan throat-singers instead of FUCKING JAY-Z, currently tied with Eminem for Best/Most Famous MC in the World, and a bigger rock star than just about anybody on KROQ's rigid, miniscule playlist.

I'm paraphrasing here, but the DJ's gist was "We're KROQ, but we're playing Jay-Z! The world's gone topsy-turvy! Dogs sleeping with cats etc." And he then went on to assure us that the song was "cool," and that if we just gave it a chance, maybe we'd like the music that the black folks are making. Am I insane? I know radio stations have their set formats and everything, but is it really that much of a stretch to think that KROQ's meth-addled 15-year-old listeners are not only familiar with Jay-Z, but might also prefer his music to that of Evanescence or Good Charlotte or the nineteen-millionth playing of that awful Sublime song about smoking two joints in the morning? Can we agree that today, in 2004, hip-hop is rock 'n roll? Why does the DJ feel the need to explain, for nearly a full minute both before and after the song, why he's playing it? The fact that "99 Problems" is a rap song? The fact that Jay-Z is black? Are KROQ's listeners really that...what's the word...stupid? And why does the DJ's explanation consist mainly of the repeated assertion that Jay-Z's girlfriend is Beyonce, and that he "better get a rock on that finger, dog?"

(And yes, I know that if Power 106 or The Beat started playing Blink-182, all hell would break loose.)

Of course, the only reason "99 Problems" is getting airtime on KROQ is that it's heavily guitar-based; it's what all those rap-metal bands wish they could have come up with. No surprise that it was produced by Rick Rubin, the guy who practically invented that sound in the 80s with Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys. But the best part of the whole thing was when the DJ said "We're an alternative station--we can play whatever we want!" Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. And ha. There were so many things wrong with that statement, I wanted to reach through the radio and strangle the DJ. I hate you, KROQ, and you especially, horrible anonymous DJ. Just play "99 Problems" and shut up--it's the best thing you've got right now, excepting "Hey Ya!" of course.
posted by Gardner at 1:52 AM |