Christian

I am reading Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq. She is an Inuit fiction writer from Nunavut.

The novel tells the story of a girl growing up in the Canadian Arctic, circa the mid-1970s.

It mixes the hard lives of poor rural people in a harsh land and a realistic portrayal of a young woman’s life, with Native Inuit culture and beliefs.

Well, subtle compared to what is upcoming.

Trust me. You’ll think it was all somewhat subtle too by the time you get to Sim telling you that women represent the abyss...

By that point, you’ll be wishing for any iota of subtlety.

If you were familiar with Sim’s earlier views, when he was a humanist and liberal, you might want to give him the benefit of the doubt until the end of “Jaka’s Story”.

Sure, the invaders are all women...but he seemed to be satirizing fundamentalist religion and there’s a parody of Thatcher (although not a very good one). Plus, Jaka is still the same woman as earlier in the series, she hasn’t turned in to a horrible person.

Then, when you get to the part about abortion, it all crystallizes that Sim is really attacking feminists.
He also makes sure to include a parody of a prominent female progressive Liberal Party of Canada candidate alongside of his earlier Thatcher to make it very obvious that Sim isn’t trying to make a point about the Right-Wing, he’s trying to make a point about an entire gender.

Then, the plot gets almost fully put aside so that Sim can use the book for his own agenda.

It’s a lot to get through, and by the time you reach “Rick’s Story” on the other side, a lot of readers were as nonplussed to discover he was now going to move on to philosophizing about monotheistic religions instead.

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I could also comment on how Sim eventually just becomes a troll with the comic too, but I don’t want to give anything away for all the “joy” you have to look forward to after “Melmoth”.

Seriously, I’m trying to warn you. If you want to continue the story of a character named Cerebus that started in “High Society”, just skip ahead to issue #300 and see how it all ends.

Sim grows bored with that story-line after “Jaka’s Story”. There is probably not much that will interest you after “Melmoth”.

You get nearly one-hundred issues of insulting misogyny followed by one-hundred issues of commentary about the Bible, Quran, and Torah with more misogyny in the background.

Plus, Sim channels his L. Ron Hubbard and thinks that it’s funny to call a character “Sigmund Fraud” in the year 2002. Seriously.

There are even a lot of really dated references to Todd McFarlane.

With hindsight, it’s pretty obvious what was going on in Sim’s head during the “Jaka’s Story” arc, although Sim was much more subtle. It’s obviously there, creeping in to the story-arc, but hasn’t completely taken over Sim’s story yet until the end of “Jaka’s Story”.

Luckily, there is the reprieve of the excellent, but somewhat tangential, “Melmoth” in between “Jaka’s Story” and “Women”.

It gets really obvious during the extended “Mothers & Daughters” chunk of the series. As if Sim’s outright descent in to pure misogyny isn’t blatant enough by that point, he has to publish an issue where he inserts himself in to the story to go on a long rant about the differences between the genders, with Sim telling us that women’s sole goal in life is to destroy men and everything men have done.

It’s a huge shame too, because in between this descent in to disturbing territory throughout “Mothers & Daughters”, Sim had some interesting stories to tell about Cerebus. He keeps losing that interesting plot in order to work his agenda in to the ongoing story though.

It’s hard to read beyond what Sim’s changing ideologies are doing to the narrative, because it becomes so blatant. Then, Sim even has to start shouting at you, “Hey! Are you not getting it? Women are all evil! They should be hated! Do you understand my point yet?”.

Ugh. Just hateful, hateful stuff after some genius story-telling in Church & State.

Sim never really recovers the series again afterwards, but at least his ranting about how much he hates women starts to go away (except in the letters pages, which sometimes get far worse than what was in his fiction even) while he obsesses over some of his other personal beliefs.

Sim was a liberal at that point in his career.

Church & State is the high-point of the series.

It wasn’t that long after C&S when Sim’s views began to change.

A few of the story-arcs at that point start to become hard reads, with Sim’s misogynistic rants starting to enter the actual plots.

Then, Sim moved on to adding a lot of philosophical musings about his monotheist religious beliefs.

I started getting interested in the book around that point again, but some people couldn’t deal with it. It overtook about actual plot most of the time.

If you can’t take it anymore after C&S, you at least have an amazing story-arc about Oscar Wilde after that. That was my second favourite story.

Now, if the letter pages get reprinted, that’s where things really get insane!

Sim regaling the world about how he’s going to call women “bitches” instead of “whores”, because women think that “whore” isn’t a pejorative anymore. Or, about how God created breast cancer to punish women. It gets way out there to very disturbing levels!

Yet more reason to hate 2020:

One of Julie’s cats, Fox (named for Fox Mulder, not anything Right-Wing), is very ill. He’s my buddy too. It isn’t looking good.

He has heart failure. He got a blood clot, which has cut off blood flow to his lower extremities. He’s now paralyzed in the bottom half of his body.

It’s very sad. He is one of the nicest cats you would ever meet. It was so sudden. He was fine this morning.

He went on his leash (Julie allows her cats in the backyard, and Fox wears a leash), and suddenly, he wasn’t able to walk. Just within an hour, he went from acting fine to not being able to walk.

We were just dressing him in Halloween costumes this past weekend...yes, we were torturing poor cats.

He is wearing these cute little white socks on his back paws, recommended by the vet. Poor guy.

Yeah, the Mark Millar issues were definitely not very good. So smug. You knew Millar couldn’t be bothered to take most of it seriously, and it showed on the page.

The best of Millar’s run were the quiet issues featuring Professor X and Magneto. Millar actually sounded sincere with those stories and it was a huge improvement over the self-aware, cynical stories he was usually turning in on the book.

I thought UXM improved after Millar. There was a really strong Brian K. Vaughn run in there, and the Robert Kirkman run started off nicely, although it was cut short so that Marvel could bring some hot Hollywood writer on the book.

I guess Kirkman got the last laugh on Marvel, turning in to a huge Hollywood star.

5 hours ago, JohnMcMahon said:

Finished Ultimate Spider-Man, which is to say that I finished Volume 12.

 

 

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I think we all know that Peter dies to make way for Miles but I was left thinking that the manner in which they did this - namely Hulk punching a magical ball -  was super lame until Parker opened his damn eyes in the very last panel!

Turns out there's a chunk more Spidey in the form of Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, why does this shit have to be so bloody confusing ?

I’m pretty sure that Ultimate Comics: Spider Man is the series starring Miles.

It would make sense that they would relaunch the book if it’s going to feature a brand new character, at least.

All the Ultimate-line books were relaunched after Ultimatum. There was also an Ultimate Comics: X-Men and Ultimate Comics: Ultimates (talk about a stupid title). Both of those two series were quite good.

There was Brian Wood pretty much redoing DMZ using mutants in the X-Men relaunch.

Jonathan Hickman relaunched the Ultimates book. He did some really interesting things with the Ultimate Universe during his run.

I haven’t read anything after USM vol. 1, myself.

I wonder if in an alternate reality, where Clinton did win the election, if that world didn’t find itself in a third World War?

Instead of that alternative, Trump and his fascist cronies offered a different way to bring about a change in the world order...with a military created virus. One that targets the “weak” and the elderly. Those who no longer serve any purpose to society.

After all, when Wall Street speculators fucked up the economy before the Great Depression, and it was time for a new world order, what did those same fat cats do?

They started to fund the Nazi Party in Germany. Obviously, these nationalist maniacs would lead the world in to another World War. Out of the ashes of World War II, a new world order arose.

One that seemed to offer great prosperity, but quickly began to break down. An order that has been crumbling faster and faster since 2001, especially after 2008 when Wall Street plutocrats really fucked up the economy again. An economy on the verge of breaking down again by the end of 2019. It can’t keep limping along, relying on injections of record low interest rates year after year.

It makes you wonder if it was time for another change in the world order. Just like Wall Street elites once helped fund insanity-fueled monsters to rise to power in Nazi Germany to build a new world order in the ashes of WWII.

Now, the choice was to rebuild from the ashes with another world war (this one possibly involving nuclear weapons, which sounds highly risky) or to rebuild from the ruins after the eugenic cleansing of a pandemic. One that is often likened to “fighting a world war” by the media.

Meanwhile, the people continue to be led along, oblivious. The same financiers who funded the Nazis to lead the world in to horror became the same masterminds getting ever richer off the new order, through the US Empire’s military-industrial complex Cold War.

The same Wall Street elites who have sucked up most of the world’s wealth since 2008 getting ever richer in the new order to come from the man-made pandemic.

”What rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem waiting to be born?”

It makes me wonder...

Well, I did come across a story in the Datlow anthology which dealt with the Zong massacre. “Haunt” by Siobhan Carroll.

If these reviewers consider historical fiction dealing with the subject of the slave trade to be “too political”...then they can go fuck themselves.

All this whining about how people want to tear down racist statues “to forget our history”....yeah, right!

They want us to remember our history but to stop celebrating the morally objectionable portions of it.

It’s these other types who want us to forget our history. To just see a statue of a slave-owner who fought for their way of life and just forget the reality, that “their way of life” denied fellow humans the same rights.

I mean, the Confederacy was right about the Union...about trade, about speculators, about industrialists. It misses the point that their entire economy was based around slavery.

Anyway, the story was too long. It started out with a lot of period details about sailing ships and action scenes. Those things just bore me.

It got a lot better once we found out that the main character served, he was press-ganged, on the Zong.

There were some nice historical details about the main character’s life, involving debtor’s prison.

I’m really confused.

A lot of Trump’s supporters say that the coronavirus is a hoax.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has a campaign ad saying that there is a pandemic still gripping the globe, but Biden still wants to increase refugees coming to America.

I don’t understand. Trump seems to be contradicting his supporters who are willing to revolt because of mask mandates. It seems there is a serious pandemic. Huh.

Al Ewing is going to be bringing back SWORD in December.

Characters announced for the series include Abigail Brand, Manifold (Gateway’s son), and (believe it or not) Wiz Kid.

Another good short story. “The Robots of Eden” by Anil Menon.

It takes place in the future, where those with “enhancements” consider themselves to be posthuman. The enhancements allow them to do things like access the internet directly through their minds. They consider themselves better then unaugmented humanity.

It has created material benefits.

The main character is a wealthy banker living in India. His ex-wife is planning to marry a Turkish man. The man is an author.

There is an argument that literature is outdated. It belongs to the past, while the enlightened posthuman has no need for anything other than reason.

The point of the story is an examination of how humanity (even posthumans) still face the same types of problems...as far as racism and inability to accept difference.

For example, the family worries about what it will be like for the children, having multi-racial parents. The ex-husband keeps calling the man “the Turk”. How will they fit in and be accepted in Indian society?

It is the literature of the famous modern day writer from Turkey, Orhan Pamuk, read by the ex-husband before his enhancements which creates common ground between the two men. He read and enjoyed Pamuk’s writing and it opened up understanding between two cultures.

The ex-husband doesn’t see this and continues to argue that literature has no value in a posthuman world. Unable to see that the same issues facing our human world are still problems even in a posthuman world.

Sadly, the writer begins to believe him. It opens up the question as to where this posthuman future is going to progress.

Ted Chiang had a good new story. Now this was a political story.

It takes place in the future when genetic enhancements to IQs are possible. Of course, this creates concern amongst liberals that a caste system is going to be created, as only the rich can afford this for their babies.

So, the Democrat government passes a social security addition which will pay for IQ enhancements of any person who wants their baby to get the procedure.

After a number of years, a study shows that almost nothing has changed. Poor parents who got this procedure, their children still tended to be poor. Many of those who got this procedure still do not attend college, even though they have genius-level IQs now.

What has gone wrong? There is a level playing field now. Almost everyone can have a very high IQ. If there are all these geniuses now, why has society not changed?

The procedure has destroyed the notion that the system is a meritocracy, and shows that a de facto caste system already exists.

After all, the idea that poor people aren’t as smart is an obviously elitist notion. There are high IQ people who are poor in current society. Most of them will just fall through the cracks. The idea that making everyone have a high IQ will correct those systemic problems is shown to be false, and the rich will just keep getting richer.

I was thinking about the issue of relatability in comics recently, as in what comic book characters do you feel are the most like you.

I concluded that the two Marvel characters I felt were most relatable to me were Richard Rory and Howard the Duck.

And I hope that no one ever uses the character of Richard Rory in the comics again, because I fear how badly they’d mangle him.

It’s weird, because I usually don’t get that emotional over famous people that I love their work. I mean, I am sad when they die, but I didn’t know them personally, and I will always have their work. 
However, for whatever reason, I still get sad when I think about Steve Gerber’s death. I only had one personal conversation with the man, and it was online.
Yet, I still miss him. When I see a reminder of his death (and it’s hard to believe he’s been gone so long already) it still makes me feel sad. I guess it was the effect that Howard the Duck and Man Thing had on me, and where my life was at the time I read those comics.
Both series were both so very personal too. It was hard to read the two books without feeling that there was a lot of autobiography being put on the page.*

*I mean, of course Richard Rory was a stand-in for Gerber too.

John-Yes, the relationship with Kitty Pryde was what I was referring to, I thought that helped carry the book through some of its lesser stories.

Taking a break from the Datlow every so often. Read “Song of the Birds” by Saleem Haddad, who is from Palestine. It deals with a subject that is apparently hard to address in Palestine, based on the writer’s note.

In the story, some Palestinian people have created an alternate world in which to escape through dreams of a Palestine no longer under occupation.

The main character is a young woman whose brother recently killed himself.

He left his journals where he talks about how this world isn’t real, and the real world is our own world.

The main character begins to see scenes of another world imposed over her world. One that seems horrible by comparison.

Sometimes her brother talks to her in her dreams and tells her about how they are trapped in an imaginary simulation.

She even asks how can the alternative be better when he is living in a real prison.

He tells her that there is only way out and that’s the decision he made.

Her father believes she is mentally ill, much like her mother who suffers from severe depression.

She begins to listen to her brother.

Obviously, the reader realizes that the brother must be right.

It addresses the real-life issue, little talked about, of suicide amongst young people in Palestine. The author has inverted reality, with young people convinced that the better world in which they find themselves can’t be real.

Well, that’s it for the election.

There was a little bit of doubt for a while, but now that Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died right before the election (just like the last election!), everything is coming up Trump again. Unbelievable.

The Christian fundies are going to be out in droves now to make sure Republicans get in office; for fear that Democrats will vote in a pro-choice judge.

This is far worse than the original Trump is going to win scenario, because the Dems probably would have done well with Congress before at least. Sensible voters would have wanted to make sure that even if Trump was going to beat Biden, that Trump wouldn’t be able to get his way on everything. Now, even that’s out the window.

God, I foresee worst case scenario. I can foresee Democrats doing well only in California, New York, Washington, most of New England (which means very little in representation), Hawaii, and maybe Florida (outside chance). Everywhere else is going to be Repub this time....

Trump is going to take it all. He’s  going to absolutely own the Supreme Court. He’s going to take back Congress. It might as well be a dictatorship, because checks and balances are over.

Not quite done with the last one yet, but Julie accidentally ordered Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year vol. 11 (in another order she made). 
Now, Datlow is one of the finest editors when it comes to horror fiction. Normally, her “best of” anthologies are an instant buy for me, but this year.’seems edition didn’t really appeal to me. There weren’t a lot of names I recognized. However, we ended up with a copy and Julie isn’t often fond of horror, so I couldn’t let it go to waste.

So, I’ve decided that people are getting dumber every year. There’s some real horror.

I had read reviews for this book on Amazon, in case I was missing something great (I mean, it is literary horror Ellen Datlow), and the majority of the reviews complain that the stories are “too political”! Read those reviews if you’d like, they’re kind of crazed.

OK, I like the sound of that actually. I could enjoy some nice biting social commentary in my horror fiction at the moment. The book is hardly “too political”. What the hell are these people on about?

So far, I haven’t really been impressed. The stories seem more like retreads of past horror fiction. That seems to be the theme, if you ask me.

We had one story ripping off Graham Greene, of all plots, and not succeeding terribly well either. One story is definitely a Lovecraft retread.

The most “political” story is probably a Joe Hill cautionary tale about the nuclear showdown between “My Missile is so much bigger than yours! Look at the size of it! It heaves for you!” and “Do you... want me to touch your missile...?” from a few years back. Since it’s Joe Hill it goes without saying that there’s nothing original to be found. I’d say it’s topical, but not overtly political.

I don’t get the feeling that is what was meant anyway.

”Too political”? Geesh!

For the first time, I’d say it’d be easy to skip Datlow’s volumn, but I recommend Paula Guran’s for 2019.

Marvel has an Indigenous Voices one-shot coming out later this year.

It will feature Native fiction writers writing some of Marvel’s Indigenous characters. They picked some good choices for the writers as well. I guess it will feature three stories.

An Echo short story by Darcie Little Badger. She has her work cut out for her, because that second David Mack Echo story from DD was pretty godawful. The first story was pretty good though.

A Dani Moonstar story by Rebecca Roanhorse. This should be good, as I’ve always liked Dani. I wonder if her being presented as gay in the NM movie will play in to the story.

And a James Proudstar story by Stephen Graham Jones. This is the story I’m most looking forward to, as Jones is the best writer of the three (the other two are good genre writers as well, but I’m a real fan of Jones). Plus, I really liked Proudstar from the John Francis Moore X-Force days. Good stuff.

Sadly left out will be American Eagle. heh

Oh, also Wyatt Wingfoot and his made up tribe. Come on now, Stan and Jack.

You are at the portion of Bendis’ run when the quality does drop. There are still some good stories ahead. There’s one more big change to the status quo that I really found helped freshen the book up towards the end, while it lasted. There are some stories in this period of the book that really do drag though, yeah.

Oh yes. It gets quite a bit better after those first couple stories.

My new favourite is “Big Mother” by Anya Ow, who is from Singapore.

It starts out reading very much like folklore, telling the story of four neighbourhood kids and their late-night fishing trip.

The story then skips ahead, and it doesn’t go where you expect. It subverts expectations. Instead, it ends up being a sad story about progress, growing up, and change.

I am reading through The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2019 edited by Paula Guran.

I read this series mostly every year.

So far, I haven’t been that impressed by her selections for this year. Although I haven’t gotten to any of the writers I was interested in reading when I bought the book.

The first story was the one I’ve enjoyed most so far, “The Thing About Ghost Stories” by Naomi Kritzer. If she would have written a subtler ending, it would have been excellent.

The Angela Slatter story was painful. I would’ve enjoyed the story when I was in high school. Guran likes these types of stories. It’s an annoyance you have to get past.

Next was a story that is just a fantasy story. It really shouldn’t have been included in this anthology. Dull.

Finally, I read the M. Rickert story. Normally I like Rickert’s fiction, which tends to be very high quality. This was a two page story, so there wasn’t much to the story.

Hopefully the stories will improve soon.

It really has become like a “third world” country in the United States.

Zero coronavirus related deaths in Canada yesterday. 48 in Spain.

Over 1,000 deaths in the US yesterday.

That’s just very, very sad.

Marvel has announced Christopher Cantwell as the new writer for Iron Man, starting later this month.

Cantwell is most known for writing the She Can Fly comic book.

I see the first search for the name “Christopher Cantwell” online turns up the alt-Right member from the Charlottesville hate show.

I wonder if some people are going to lose their minds now, thinking that Marvel has hired a neo-Nazi to write comics?

The whole anti-Islamic thing sort of got lost after Trump was elected, which was a major surprise after the 2016 election, when Trump was still heavily stoking the “war on terror” rhetoric.

Suddenly, Mexican immigrants became the biggest threat to ‘Merica, and the alt-Right decided to dig up old-style Nazi anti-Jewish conspiracy theories rather than bother with the Islamiphobia. Not that they don’t hate Muslims and Arabs too, of course. It’s just that we all know that the Jews are the real masterminds behind every bad thing that occurs in the world.

The Muslim hatred was a lot worse under W. Bush than we have saw since Trump, actually. Guantanamo Bay (circa 2001-2008) wants to have a little word with Liberal amnesia, me thinks.
I guess it makes sense since we were so much closer to the events of 9/11/01, and that was the government’s main propaganda, plus the starting of the “war on terror”.
Today, we now have youth entering the workforce who were only just born when 9/11 happened, as amazing as that seems.