Sweet Tooth and the Slowing Down of the Apocalypse

After finishing volume 3 of the Jeff Lemire series Sweet Tooth, I had a thought about apocalyptic comics and their relation to the decompressed storytelling that's all over the place these days.

These damn kids and their lack of compression.

Because I feel like I can talk about it more openly without spoiling anything, I'm going to talk about it in the context of the Walking Dead instead of Sweet Tooth, purely because you should really give Sweet Tooth a try, and I feel like if you haven't already gotten into the Walking Dead yet...sorry.

(By the way, if you want to learn what this decompression stuff is all about, read the awesome article here)

The Walking Dead has a tendency to oscillate between very fast-paced, intense storytelling where a main character might be shot one minute, then another main character the next, then possibly someone gets axed in the head. A couple issues later, we might get a long, drawn-out discussion of who the REAL monsters are.

The thing that I've noticed is this: As the physical environment contracts, the story decompresses, gets slower. An example in Walking Dead is the time that the characters spend in the prison. When they are locked away and safe, they spend a lot more time talking and discussing, less time dying and decapitating.

As the environment expands, for example in the moments as the characters flee the prison, the story becomes more compressed, a lot of shit happening in a short time.

I guess it's kind of a no-brainer when you think about it. Say you've got two pit bulls who want to do nothing more than kill each other. Put them in a gigantic office building and you've got time on your hands. Put them on a basketball court and we'll see action right off. Put them in a refrigerator box and there will be nothing BUT action.

The thing that bothers me most about decompression, because as a trade paperback reader it has less effect, is that sometimes it becomes difficult to establish a sense of time in a book.

Which brings us to Sweet Tooth.

Sweet Tooth shares a lot of similarities with Walking Dead in tone and the fact that we're talking about a post-apocalyptic situation. But what Walking Dead does a little better is let me know about how much time has passed. Sometimes it's clumsy, like, "Can you fucking believe we be in this bullshit for 8 months and 17 days?" or something along those lines. But I can live with it.

Sweet Tooth, with its accordion-like story, doesn't help out as much. Could be months, a year, maybe three hours. I really don't know, and it doesn't seem to be too important.

I can live with it to an extent, but the passage of time, which is fairly unimportant when you are IN the apocalyptic situation, is of importance when you are READING ABOUT it. In The Road by Cormac McCarthy, we don't get much exactness in anything, but we do see the seasons change a bit and time passes in terms of food consumed, how desperate things are getting, and the aging of the characters.

I guess it's just something to think about, how important time is in these apocalyptic stories despite the fact that I can't imagine it would matter to the characters at all.

Amazing Spider-Man Update: Kingpin Fashion Faux Pas

Every comic I read with the Kingpin in it makes absolutely sure to remind me that the Kingpin is not a big fat bastard. He is, in fact, SO muscular that he just appears to be a tubby bitch.

I guess it must be true in the world of the comics. Daredevil has claimed it, and Spider-Man has corroborated the fact, which is significant because, well, Daredevil can't see shit, so I wouldn't put him as my number one when it comes to picking a fatty out of a lineup.

But look at him! In what way does he not look like a big fat bastard? Since when has there been such a thing as a neck roll of muscle? And a double chin, also of muscle?

The other thing is that, because he's not actually a fatty, Spider-Man and friends get to constantly make fun of him for being a fatty. In one issue alone, I got Tubby, Fatty, and my personal favorite, Chubbins. I feel like we're being cheated here a little bit, like Marvel comics knows that by making him not fat, it is therefore okay for the jolly Spider-Man to call him fat without coming off as a bastard who is picking on the fat kid. They get to have their (multiple, multiple, frosting-layered) cakes and eat them too (naked on a bed while watching Oz DVDs).

Me? I'm not buying it.

Let's compare. Of these three, which two look most alike?




Now maybe the Kingpin exists in a world of comic book characters that have freakish powers and also freakish manifestations of said powers. The Thing is really strong, but his curse is that he looks like a rock man. The Human Torch has amazing powers, but his curse is constantly burning club skanks alive in the middle of the night. Mr. Fantastic is a stretchy guy whose intelligence makes it impossible to not come off as a dick. Sue Storm has invincibility and forcefield powers, but she's a woman. The world of Marvel comics is filled with these give/take propositions where you usually have to give up something to get something. Perhaps the Kingpin, in one of these unspoken deals, has given up fitting into a reasonable pair of pants as a downside to his super strength.

Speaking of said pants, I would, like to offer the Kingpin some of my patented fashion advice, being the helpful(snowman.com) guy that I am.

1: Bald is not slimming
When you're bald, your head looks smaller. Having a smaller head makes your body look bigger. This is the opposite side of the effect you see on models who look like they have huge heads because their bodies are so tiny. My advice is to pump up that pumpkin, either with hair, horribly poisonous injections, or a nice hat.

2: Double-breasted suits are a no-no for large men
In fact, they're pretty much a no-no for everyone except for Confederate generals and racist chicken magnates. In setting up two lines of buttons, you're setting up a large negative space right in the center of your gut. The eye is drawn here, and it makes the lines of the clothing seem much thicker.

3: Black is slimming. So guess what white is?
Maybe throw out the motorcycle cover you've been wearing as a coat, trade it in for something a little more fitting of a man of your stature, both physically and in terms of respect owed to you.

4: Don't forget about the legs
You're clearly a fit man, and this is a problem for many men. Spend the last fifteen minutes that you would normally spend on your arms on doing some leg raises, abductors, calf raises, and even some squats. You're a crime lord, not a female magician who does topless shows in Vegas, by which I mean the top-heavy body with skinny legs ain't working in your favor.

5: Purple Pants
I don't even know what to say about this. In terms of fashion, every man needs to ask himself, Can I pull off purple? You don't wear it ironically, which I appreciate. Nothing worse than an asshole in a pink shirt who is not pulling it off because you can tell he's constantly thinking about the fact that he's wearing a pink shirt. That said, you can offset your freakish body by dressing normally.

6: Lose the cravat
I feel like you're using your entire look to puff everything out, therefore disguising your body lines. But it looks like your suit has a built-in airbag that inflates to keep you away from day-old baked goods. Just because you aren't slim doesn't mean you can't wear items that are slimmING.

Looking good...

Kindle Fire and DC

Amazon and DC have announced that DC digital comics will be available exclusively for the Kindle Fire, their new...well, I don't know what exactly it is. Media tablet? Their new thing.

Shortly thereafter, Barnes & Noble announced that they will no longer carry DC books in their stores, including older stuff like Watchmen and the like.

So who did the right thing?

Okay, it's clear that both companies are only out for themselves. Amazon wants exclusivity to the point that their tablet is like a VIP room, just without the g-string women. Unless maybe they plan to carry back issues of Gen 13, in which case I would have a whole new understanding of what the fuck the point of this thing is.

Barnes & Noble can pretend to be on the side of the consumer, but the truth is that their Nook Color is just about the only thing that kept them going the way of Borders, and they want to defend their turf.

In this case, I'm coming down on the side of the big BN. It sucks because it will greatly reduce my consumerism, aka sitting at a table and reading shit for free. But I think that DC/Amazon made a move and BN was forced to react, sort of like when my girlfriend tickles me and I'm forced to diarrhea.

I think that Amazon might not understand the monthly comic-buying audience. Here, from what I can tell, are the three most common ways monthly readers get their shit:

1. Comic specialty shops.
2. Ordering directly.
3. Torrent.

That number 3 there is the really important one. Why in the hell would I buy a Kindle Fire when I could use whatever tablet I may have and read the entirety of Detective Comics for free? Or, as most torrentors discover, have them available to read and never, ever do so? Also free.

The Kindle Fire looks kind of rad, don't get me wrong, but I just can't picture someone saying, "Hey, comics are like $3 and I am sort of into those. You know what I would like to do? Spend a couple hundos to get a tablet, then pay for digital issues." You know what I would do with $199? Buy $199 worth of comics, which I would also then have the option of adding to a PHYSICAL collection, by the way. Yeah, I'm telling you right now, a digital comics collection is officially uncool. Completely, totally, not cool. And it never will be. A collection of files? What are you, an accountant?

All this publisher exclusivity is stupid, and who suffers? Readers. What's next, comic stores having to pick between publishers the way restaurants have to pick between Pepsi and Coke? Nobody is going to tell a waiter to fuck off when he says, "Pepsi okay?" but truthfully, Pepsi not okay. And if I order Amazing Spider-Man and someone says, "Legion of Superheroes okay?" I would absolutely say, "No. And fuck off."

Rather than trying to bury their books in a niche, publishers should be doing the work of making the best possible books. Going back to the Pepsi/Coke analogy, you can trap people in a restaurant, but when they go to the grocery store and choose, that's the real test of good product, and that's the market you should be capturing.

Write the best comics and it won't matter where you're exclusive. Quit making bullshit business moves, start writing.

Age of Apocalypse: Eh, Screw It

Remember this?

This was the biggest thing in X-comics during the mid-90's, no? It was all the rage, all the crossover action, and half the number of Wolverine hands. So you can imagine my excitement when I picked up the trades.

And my confusion when I finished the first one with a resounding, What the fuck is going on?

It was confusing as hell, and I figured out why.

Here is the suggested reading order from an excellent Age of Apocalypse web site:

1) X-Men: AoA One-Shot [3rd story]

02) X-Men Chronicles #1

03) X-Men Chronicles #2

04) Tales of the Age of Apocalypse #2

05) X-Man #minus 1

06) X-Man Annual '96

07) X-Men: AoA One-Shot [2nd story]

08) Tales of the Age of Apocalypse #1

09) X-Men: AoA One-Shot [1st story]

10) Blink #1

11) Blink #2

12) Blink #3

13) Blink #4

Here is the reading order of this first trade paperback, near as I can figure it:

1. X-Men Chronicles #1

2. Tales of the Age of Apocalypse #2

3. Tales of the Age of Apocalypse #1

4. X-Men Chronicles #2

5. X-Man -1

6. X-Man Annual ‘96

7. Blink #1

8. Blink #2

9. Blink #3

10. Blink #4

So, if we add the two pieces of data together, the reading order I was presented with, expressed numerically, is as follows:

2, 4, 8, 3, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13

The only issues remotely in order are the last four, and even those apparently exist outside the normal timeline. Here is the summary of those four from the aforementioned web site:

Blink’s own four issue limited series takes her amnesiac into the Negative Zone, from which she later returns after encountering Blaastar and Annihilus. The last three pages of issue #4 flash forward to the end of the Age of Apocalypse and show Blink getting teleported away from the timeline shortly before it was apparently destroyed.

So we've got a character I know nothing about, in the Negative zone, which would be an awesome name for a comic critique blog, by the way, where who knows what the hell is going on, and then a flash forward to the end of the Age of Apocalypse. If I may repeat that, a flash forward to the end of a 4-tbp series that I am currently in the first fourth of.

I know things were pretty chaotic, what with Apocalypse taking over the world and culling all non-mutants. But could we at least get the story in some kind of order? I mean, this shit is all mixed up anyway, so why not mix it up in a logical fashion?

Not to make things worse, but in looking up another summary, here's what I discovered happened "before" (pre in terms of timeline, possible post in terms of in-story revelation) the first issue I read:

The Age of Apocalypse came about as a result of a mistake made by Legion, the time travelling son of Xavier. Legion, suffering from feelings of abandonment and his bouts with schizophrenia, decided that if Magneto had not existed, Charles Xavier would have had more time for his son. To rectify this problem in his life, Legion went back in time 20 years to kill Erik Magnus Lensherr before he became Magneto. He accidentally took four X-Men back in time with him: Storm, Iceman, Psylocke and Bishop.

The trip through time temporarily wiped the memories of Legion and the X-Men, but eventually Legion remembered the reason for his presence there. He attacked Lensherr and Xavier, since Charles was standing right there at the time. Cable sent his mind back in time and was able to warn/remind Bishop of what Legion was about to do. Bishop, Storm, Psylocke and Iceman quickly move to help Lensherr and Xavier fight Legion, but they are not strong enough. Just as Legion was about to kill Lensherr with a Psi-Bolt, Xavier threw himself between them, and died. Since Xavier was Legion's father, Legion ceased to exist. The X-Men that were products of Xavier's training (Storm, Psylocke and Iceman) also cease to exist. The only ones left are Bishop, who wanders off, and Erik Lensherr, whose confused and shocked mind can only comprehend the fact that his best friend died to save him from a murderous mutant with awesome powers. The death of Xavier in the past rewrote history; since Xavier was not there to oppose him, Apocalypse was able to take control of the world.

At that point we arrive on the doorstep of what was generously called Issue 1.

Does this story exist in normal continuity? Honestly, I have no fucking idea. It all happened on an alternate Earth, and the events had very few effects on the Earth as we know it, although apparently Bishop absorbed some of his alternate-self memories and Genosha somehow learned...you know what? I don't give a fuck about accuracy here. The answer in a nutsack, is No.

As a reader of trades almost exclusively, this brings up the big problem with crossovers, as I see it. Most companies are unwilling to publish the entirety of a story in one sane, rational, logical, complete-ist volume. And sorry, but I'm not going to buy a Deadpool trade just to see what the hell he was up to during the Marvel Crossover Fuckfest 2011. I don't care about that character, and if he's only going to be preipherally involved, just leave him out. I don't need him.

Here's what I'm thinking, guys.

Instead of crossing everything over, essentially destroying the integrity of the storyline to jam everything together into one big story that is impossible to read because humans can't read three books simultaneously, how about you do your crossover series as an entirely separate series? You can have your Civil War and have Captain America eat it (a bullet) too. You can have a title called X-Men: Age of Apocalypse, and then use that to tell whatever insane nonsense you want in an order that doesn't require an advanced degree in quantum mechanics to derive.

And what about the assholes who say things like, "How can the Thing be fighting the Hulk in January's World War Hulk while also being on Saturn with the Fantastic Four?" Oh, it's simple. They can find their peace by going and fucking themselves because to assume that all issues printed at the same time contain events occurring at the same time is a leap of faith so big that only Stilt Man could step over the gap. Or possibly any character with any sort of power or ability or high school track experience. *ahem*

Based on the amount of buzz at the time and the still-fervent fans online, it's clear that Age of Apocalypse was something special. But the form I find it in now is so unpalatable. It's like wedding cake left in the freezer for the first anniversary. We're all a little older, the initial excitement has ended, and rearranging the molecules has affected the whole in a way that makes me want to sign divorce papers so badly that I'm literally tasting it.

Demo

For those who haven't read this yet, the idea is that every issue was a short story about a young person with a different "power."

I say "power" instead of power or Power! because I guess some of these things would not really be qualified as powers. Eating human flesh? I mean, I guess it depends on the chef. You know that part in the Hannibal movie where he's just cooking up a piece of that dude's brain? I feel like brain meat would be rubbery. Not the most delicious part of a person. So eating that, that's a sort of power, I guess.

The thing wasn't up my alley because, frankly, I think I'm kind of over origin stories. I thought it was because I ended up reading the same origins so many times, and one of my fantasies is to have an amnesia that wipes only my knowledge of comics as it would allow me to enjoy them with a fresh eye. But it turns out, origin stories are just a little boring to me. Usually they're a necessary evil to get to the meat of the story, but Demo is kind of all origin.

It's not a bad idea, but I feel like comic book fans have seen about half of this whether it be Rising Stars or Rising Starts the TV Series aka Heroes.

So instead of talking more about how origins bore me, which is sort of MY origin and therefore also boring, I figured I'd write how I would handle a few of these situations differently if I were involved in them.

Issue 1 summary: A guy and a girl are running away. She is on mystery meds, and when she gets off them you get the idea some bad shit is going to happen.

Uh, baby, listen. I know you think that the meds you take to not make you crazy are really only because people are scared of your superpowers. But maybe you think that because you're crazy, which is why you are taking the meds. Now, I'm not calling you a liar. Sweetness, maybe you ARE the only person who has ever been prescribed medicines to somehow dampen superpowers for some reason. And I want to encourage you to explore that idea, do some soul-searching, while I see other people, preferably who are either not insane and on meds or having superpowers that could blow up someone's head. Either way.

Issue 2 summary: A girl can make anyone do anything she says. Or, to shorten:
Issue 2 summary: Preacher.

Okay, this is pretty serious. You seem sincere about being a normal kid, doing the right thing. So I can see why never saying a thing is appealing. But I think we can both see how someone pushes your buttons, and you hold it in so long that instead of saying something harmless like, I don't know, "Please leave immediately and never talk to me again" you end up telling them to put a grenade in their own mouth and pull the pin. I feel like there's room for compromise here.


Issue 3 summary: A (step)brother and sister come together at their father's funeral, where the brother points out that their family line is immortal. Also, creepy incestuous vibes run amok.

Look, if you want to bang your step brother, just do it. The more you debate it in your head, the creepier it is. The more you think about it, the harder it is to get drunk and "accidentally" do it. Five or six times.


Issue 8 summary: A guy finds his dead girlfriend and listens to a tape she made him, which is full of instructions and revelations.

Um, sorry, but a tape that doesn't include Phil Collins' "Against All Odds"? Even once? Pass.


Issue 12 summary: Some kind of poem thing(?)

[angrily flipping back to cover to check price after finishing the issue within 40 seconds of reading]