Incognito and It Feels Bad to Be Good

Reading Incognito, which was pretty not bad, DID remind me of a trend that I remember flaring up sometime during the 90's and which may never have gone away: Making bad guys into good guys.

For me, most memorable was Venom from the Spider-Man comics. It appeared that someone at Marvel had the following thought process:

A: People like this Venom character.

B: People ALSO like our superhero characters.

C: If Venom were a superhero, he would be liked EVEN MORE.

What he never got to was:

D: Perhaps being a villain is part of his appeal, and therefore his appeal would go away if he had to become a good guy.

Not to mention the fact that they always had to come up with some bizarre reasoning for bad guys to become good guys. Usually they were kind of tricked into it, and then there would be one of two lines delivered:

A: "Well, I guess I'm a good guy, but only because it's convenient for me today, so don't expect any continuity-changing shit to go down."

B: "Huh. You know, it just never occurred to me that doing good stuff would feel this good. Nobody ever gave me the chance to do good before. I hope this doesn't end in a misunderstanding with law enforcement that makes me default back to being a bad guy again really quickly and easily."

Yeah, this is what I wanted, Spider-Man who refers to himself in the plural. Real fun.

Frank Miller Occupies the Internets

Frank Miller, old coot, has made some people a tad bit pissed off with his rant about the whole occupy Wall Street, % thing. Some choice quotes:

“Occupy” is nothing short of a clumsy, poorly-expressed attempt at anarchy, to the extent that the “movement” – HAH! Some “movement”, except if the word “bowel” is attached - is anything more than an ugly fashion statement by a bunch of iPhone, iPad wielding spoiled brats who should stop getting in the way of working people and find jobs for themselves.

In the name of decency, go home to your parents, you losers. Go back to your mommas’ basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft.

Or better yet, enlist for the real thing. Maybe our military could whip some of you into shape.

They might not let you babies keep your iPhones, though. Try to soldier on.

Okay, wow.

This whole thing has caused some Miller backlash, although I don't think it's warranted, the reason being nothing he's written in the last decade or so has really been of interest anyway. However, I think people are taking it too far. Lest we forget:

To get my personal politics out of the way, I DO disagree with him. Frankly, I don't think that the phrase "get a job" is really a rational or considered response to any sort of problem. And I think someone else put it best, "I'm more apt to believe that 1% of the population is greedy than I am to believe that 99% is lazy." However, I don't really understand the purpose of standing around outside of places with signs. I don't think that the richest people are really bothered by the fact that they are rich. I don't think awareness is really the problem. It doesn't matter how aware someone is if they don't give a shit. To be blunt, I have very little respect for peaceful protest because I think it's ineffective. We've ascribed a sort of honor to protesting peacefully, but I think that's a social more we've created so that people stop smashing shit. If you look at the sit-ins used by Gandhi or the Civil Rights movement, they didn't fistfight anyone, but they effectively shut down a business, which is still a way of forcing someone to change. The modern version would be to sit INSIDE a financial institution, rendering it useless.

To be short and comics-related about it, I don't really agree with Miller's politics.

Regardless, Frank Miller has done some of my all-time favorite shit. I'm not going to pretend that his batting average is perfect, but I'll take a writer who produces 5-10 classic books over one who puts out 100 forgettable ones. You hear me, Ron Marz?

Honestly, I have no idea why anyone really gives a shit about what Frank Miller says about the whole thing, not because I think he's a wholesale idiot but because his job, his profession, is writing comics where a dude gets his crank pulled off. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but the road from crank-yanking to political commentary isn't a clear one to me.

But this is how this shit works nowadays. Back when, your Frank Millers would have probably been fairly quiet about their politics. But once you start writing a blog, you start a dialogue with the world that you imagine both sides of, so if you type about politics, it's because you're wanting someone to ask you about politics. Blogging just removes the need to be asked.

So am I going to throw out my treasured copy of Dark Knight?

Hell no. Because if I was going to do that, I would have done it because he wrote Dark Knight Strikes Again, not because he told a bunch of people to get a job.

Dr. McNinja: Night Powers

The hilarious exploits of Dr. McNinja, his velociraptor-riding sidekick Gordito, and their nemesis: King Radical.

If you're not already interested, don't waste your time by reading further or asking me out on (more) dates. But DO check out the top moments from the life and times.

This collection was brought to you from the internet. Yes, McNinja is a webcomic available here. But honestly, I found reading it in book form to be much more satisfying.

McNinja feels like it's written like a traditional comic, then divvied up into daily pages. It's good stuff, and it's much better than a lot of daily strips which just don't reach the high levels of comedy you see here:

Not to mention the fact that the print edition includes small footnotes on every page. I'm not normally a footnote fan, and I think David Foster Wallace may, MAY, have realized what a mistake he was making with those when he did the deed. But these are pretty hilarious. Skipping them doesn't kill the story, and they're short enough that they don't kill the momentum. Some highlights:

"So step one is walk down by the docks with your shirt off."

"You may notice that the world of Dr. McNinja is very similar to that of video-game shooters. Flammable barrels are everywhere."

"My dad used to fly a jet like this one, and I asked him about what would really happen in this situation, but in the end I still just went with what I thought would be coolest."

"Whoever determined the spelling for 'pterodactyl' is kind of a jerk."

"Punching dinosaurs can quickly become an addiction."

"I don't even know if spider webs are flammable. Again, this is Zelda basically steering this comic."

"One kid on Legends of the Hidden Temple actually ran off the set when a temple guard got him. I would love to see that one."

"'You are an ugly horse.' Worse insult to a unicorn, or a person? Discuss."