Cunning Man

Romney was attacking Schumacher Bane.

The Borg should be like army ants. If they have a queen, which would make some sense, they should carry her around like a battle standard. Rather than remaining stationary they leave a wake as they expand, like a galactic ripple. ST:FC had a terrible third act. That pretty much ended the Borg for me. Space vampires are cool, but why bother injecting nanites into people manually when you have teleportation? A Borg could just strut down a ship hallway with a "fuck you" face on while the crew members around it started screaming and writhing to the Assimilation Polka. For that matter why not just mass produce robot ships that could spew nanites everywhere without even worrying about finding alien life, and send that shit out 24/7, or whatever a day/week is on your planet?

We need a new show. All the Carl Sagan ideas about prejudices like geocentrism inevitably disappearing with the increase of knowledge are valid but Star Trek never kept up with modern technology, let alone its own.

I think I'm giving up on this title until the next writer comes aboard, and I'm also dropping Justice League Dark. Milligan has proven he has NO IDEA how to write a John Constantine title.

I would just like to say I'm not overly pleased with the use of parentheses in this thread's comments. I'm not especially happy about them, at all.

 

Is that prophecy you are indulging yourself in?. You cast the runes, and can see where the present decline is aimmed?.

 

Something like that. All the good ideas were taken between the above and the Constantine 2 thread.

John and Gemma

[No longer hotlinkable image of pimp and hooker]

Too scary?

Damn, guys. You're making me sad. I've not picked it up yet, but I'm feeling some serious trepidation.

 

I'm really surprised that Lemire is not bringing his A(nimal)-game. So, maybe it is editorial enforcing certain points regardless of who's on the book.

Spoilery:

I read the first 6 issues of AM yesterday and I wouldn't have known the last installment of JLD was by the same writer. When John woke up in a shitty hotel room surrounded by empty bottles and magic texts at the beginning of the issue, he might have been Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now, except that would have been cooler. I agree it feels like a superhero book and specifically, to me at least, the problems feel like those in JLI, which I heard was getting axed: there's too much going on too fast and none of it matters.

If DC weren't just trading on recognition of the characters, they would make an effort to have them act in a semi-recognizable fashion. Instead everything feels like a corporate property: "John Constantine has value X. Have him describe The Black Room and The Black Room acquires value X. Books which feature The Black Room will now sell volume X." Nevermind that the John I know would neither be awed by the existence of some government goon's toy collection, nor have left anything of value unstolen from it years ago. Why not just have him endorse Pep Boys while we're at it?

I predict this book will be completely forgotten if it continues like this.

I liked Flash.

http://screenrant.com/dark-knight-returns-movie-cast-sandy-174006/

I'll say what others said about Year One: the anime style seems a bit lacking in grit. Also where are all the citizens of Gotham? I'm getting the impression it's expensive to add extras.

that episode pales into mildness alongside asking /allowing his niece to seduce his demon twin.

Are you forgetting that this is old fashioned evil that likes nothing better than to make people not believe in God? Which we know, from Tony's fate is Hell, the only other option being religious bigotry?

No price is too high...

:mong:

ETA

You know what? Of course Gemma had to use sex as a weapon against the demon. You know why? There's nothing else to her.

Before Milligan took over she had brains and guts enough to fend off the demon or escape it, but now she's just a victim. This counterfeit premise is what makes her revenge a farce. The demon is not the one that took her power away. Milligan is.

I refuse to speak any more of this issue. Good day.

I read somewhere that a tradition in the cabala has it that demons can be killed. If they don't have free will they couldn't have fallen, I'd assume. They're basically angels that don't channel divine power. John fucked up Gabriel anyway.

Yeah, pretty much. DC seems to have it in their minds that everything has to be a lead-up to an "epic" image of a team flying together into battle with little or no consideration for any other elements that comprise a story. It's like they only want to portray sequences of events that could be easily ended on tv with an announcer saying, "The NEW 52!" I think I'll start ending my posts that way. Everything I say henceforth is an advertisement for my other advertisements.

This idea of a "map to the source of all magic" is pretty chucklicious. It's very Piers Anthony. I can't wait to see who becomes the Dark Phoenix. The NEW 52!

this totally random instance.

John killing a wife abuser is totally random if it doesn't form a pattern with: Gemma wearing sexy clothes but not wanting sex; and not forgiving her one-time attacker, but killing him as if part of a revenge fantasy. Of course, it could all just be coincidence.

Great so far, though I've gotten sidetracked by the "Goth songs that must never be played again" mix.

I got this beauty in 2006 for forty bucks. The canopy opens, the steering turns the rubber wheels, and machine guns flip out of the hood. When it's in the shop I drive this around.

Two things John Constantine cannot abide: males who dehumanize women, and fat chicks.

There's no point in trying to explain the illogic and attitudinal inconsistencies when the comic overall is so dopey and shallow. Nothing in it resonates. It's like a crumpled up page from an older, better Hellblazer: you can identify what it is, imagine what it's supposed to be, but it's only fragments without any story-like cohesion. Trash. I want to say it'll get better when Pete's left but the whole company's topsy turvy now from the look of it. I'm not sure sufficient enthusiasm would exist to get the title back on track with a new writer. It doesn't feel like there's any oversight.

I think it means the phone rings or the other player suddenly remembers some previous engagement and has to leave, forfeiting the game.

Morrison never said that Batman was gay.

Kinda he did. I thought it was from Supergods which is what I meant when I said "the new book".

His theory in the new book about Batman being gay and into rave fashion for instance; do we know if he's ever considered the view that the batarangs, stealth, effectiveness of disguise, ridiculously lucky avoidance of bullets, and so on, are all simply a kid's idea of how a grown up could rid the world of crime

Quite possibly they might be, but Bob Kane Bill Finger was a bit older than that when he came up with the character.

I'm not sure if you're joking, but adults can write fiction for kids imitative of a child's simpler view of the universe.

Except their "sensitivity" moved them in opposite directions.

Lovecraft's sensitivity made him slight at change. He felt that society was being disordered by chaotic forces which were making society progress in ways that were threatening to what he felt of as stability.

Well, each of them characterized the dragon of darkness in his life according to the particulars of his circumstances, but each took up the lance to slay it, and in doing so escape the jaws of death, or the death of his way of life as it were. Their methods were certainly also different.

I've argued, as well, that Moore sticks more to traditionalism than Morrison.

Morrison's type of magic is much more the exemplar of "chaos magic". He has little time for history or tradition, and a lot of time for pop culture, wry cynicism, and cutting corners.

I think those descriptions are right. Morrison doesn't seem to have any checks on him, self-imposed or otherwise. His theory in the new book about Batman being gay and into rave fashion for instance; do we know if he's ever considered the view that the batarangs, stealth, effectiveness of disguise, ridiculously lucky avoidance of bullets, and so on, are all simply a kid's idea of how a grown up could rid the world of crime? That interpretation of Batman makes a lot more sense to me than stubbornly holding him to realistic standards. I never hear anyone question Grant. As much as I enjoy his fiction I don't always understand the authority vested in him on these subjects.

I'd question that Morrison doesn't use magic in his art. Hasn't he gone on record a few times saying that was the whole point of The Invisibles?

(And the point of Veidt's line in Watchmen, iirc, is that Moore wanted a big bad he could sympathise with, rather than making it one of the right leaning psychopaths like Rorschach and The Comedian...)

What I meant to say was that Morrison and Moore don't use it the same way in most instances. They have different styles of art one could argue because they proceed from different styles of magic.

Veidt was oversensitive the way Lovecraft was. It may be a noble trait, or born from a noble impulse, but the imbalance it creates is potentially harmful. Its moral ambiguity makes sympathy with it an uncertain outcome.

That's the whole thrust of chaos magic(k) however Phil Hine and Pete Carroll try to dress it up, is it not?

Let me preface by saying I don't use the word magick. It and prestidigitation are both magic to me, seen from different imaginative heights.

Morrison doesn't seem to use art as magic, as Moore does. Morrison makes sigils in his free time, as far as I know, to force outcomes he prefers. Moore's stories involve forces he doesn't favor, as though he were by writing it merely performing a ceremony akin to the ancient Greek theater Weston describes in her 'From Ritual to Romance'. To make a sigil, or to perform many other types of ritual magic -gathering the right candles, incense, colors- is to try to increase probability of types of things happening by creating a specific mind-frame. I'm not sure Alan Moore understands quantum physics any better than I do, which isn't really at all, but I think he and I are both subjectivists, and we would agree that anything scientists articulate with regard to the natural world is ultimately only our perception of it, and thus language. So he can fudge a character like Dr Manhattan with a lot of tonally Taoist speech, and my History of Science professor could explain gravity to a layman like myself with the example of a sweet-smelling room drawing him to it as though he were a clump of inanimate matter sliding into thinning space. So too, with yellow apparel, a Jovial tone, and a fictional rape, Moore tries to invoke Jupiter. I used to try to see his types as gods dressed in modern fashion, but I now believe I had the names right and was looking for the wrong type of celestial beings. As I said in a previous post, he takes a more astrological tack.

This power of invocation is the illusion which terrifies the destructive, self-entitled assholes who think they're running the world, and what more than anything else entices them. On the one hand any runt could do it, and that's chaos in the making; but on the other, if there were some magic word that could turn everyone into mindlessly consuming war drones, I have literally no doubt the swine would flood all existent media with it non-stop, and to the best of their well-funded ability. But how fucking infantile would that be? I ask as someone who like every other human being on Earth has secretly craved this power, if even only as a kid playing make-believe, or an adult reciting the Charm of Making from 'Excalibur' just to see if anything would happen. [i also ask as part of the majority that enjoys the moral superiority of not having destroyed countless lives out of a stupidly pointless, self-aggrandizing wish to rule.] Okay, everyone's tired of the “power corrupts” trope, but how do you trust your motivations, or the strength of your character in the face of temptation? That's the point of Veidt's line in 'Watchmen' that runs: “I've saved Earth from Hell. Next, I'll help her towards Utopia.” That should send up a red flag in the reader's mind. All of this is in regard to the claim of elitism in magic. Yes, it's noble to wish to storm Heaven, to steal the fire and bring it down to your fellow men, but what do you do when you get there? Crowley in his Confessions said that even when Thelema was established as a global law (any day now) mankind would need guidance. How do the teachings of the Thule Society aid something like German National Socialism? How does socialism become fascism? To sum it up -or at least make an exit from it- while sigil magic may aid chaos (and its nobility may in part be dependent on the fact that most people aren't very effective with it) by making everyone who uses it a valid, relevant force in the universe, beholden to no one and nothing, there exists in it the seed of true elitism, which promises a correct standard, and followers to adopt it, all of whom and one's self make up the Us that opposes Them, they of course being infidels.

Just as I see no magick without stage magic, no sigil needs to exist apart from representations of the forces it counters. When Moore draws a circle, he calls all four Watchtowers: when he invokes Apollo, he also invokes Saturn and Mars, so the former may dispel them. There is no rule-breaking without rules. Maybe the oldest con is after all to provide people with options and let them think they're making up their own minds. It's worked for the American government. And of course the devil's oldest trick, to once again quote Uncle Al, is to let people rely on their own good nature. In any case, use of Lovecraftian stuff can't define anything Alan Moore does as strictly chaos-orientated however appropriately that describes Lovecraft, because Moore really is just telling jokes, and that means showing opposite sides of each story he writes.

BTW, A lot of people fault things I write because I try to provide my own take on things and to some extent define my own terms, and this means my posts may conflict with established dogmas, such as that of chaos, sigils, or whatever. I only try to express my perspective. If I seem insensitive or blunt sometimes just ignore me or tell me to fuck off.

PPS, I haven't heard of any of the neo-pagans mentioned in this thread.

FAITH IS BROKEN

Batman is broken...

Batman is faith?

The Bat that flits at close of Eve Has left the Brain that won't Believe.

-John Blake

Eh, still not feeling it. Looks like a generic action movie with plain costumes.

The latter was much more of a divergence from H.P.'s fiction. [ Spoiler : Cthulhu is not Rosemary's Baby and Leng is not the fucking fourth dimension! ] It might not deserve more readings, but it could sustain them, particularly in light of some of Kenneth Grant's writing.

Belated but, isn't that the whole point of Neonomicon? Moore's big on his chaos magick since he hit 40 (he can call it whatever the hell he wants, but it's chaos magick), and there's been an increasing movement in that over the last twenty or fifteen years to co-opt Lovecraft's imagery. The whole comic seems to have a lot more to do with Asenath Mason and her predecessors in this foolishness than it does with Lovecraft.

I'm having serious technical issues but here's a brief placeholder response.

Don't agree about Moore's magic being chaosy. I think it's more the sort Frances Yates describes re Giordano Bruno; astrological imagery used to shift mood. If that's done in a way that favors chaos, fine. If it ultimately leads through a rational analysis of all symbols involved to a favor of order, fine. Saying one ripple of effect better defines overall effect than its predecessor or later is not fine, imo. Moore works from a certain school of art he's defined himself from identifiable sources, including symbols of all major psychological faculties, and all those factors are in play in the reader in its reception. Lovecraftesque items may serve the story's intended goal but can't ultimately define it. BBL