Comic Wallet #6: Lum
~ Sam
There’s so much conflict, so much pain… You keep waiting for the dust to settle and then you realize this is it: The dust is your life going on.
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| — | kitty pryde in astonishing x-men by joss whedon |
Best prepare yourself for some uncomfortable direct eye contact Maryland, because I’m coming your way.
SPX is this weekend and I will be there tearing it up. I will have a collection of all the Benny Comics arch strips, The Benny Comics Color Supplement Spectacular, which contains all the watercolor one off strips, and my newest comic, Ghost story #1. I will also have a handful of B.F.F packs that contain all three comics and a super bonus prize of two hand made best friend bracelets! Once you and the person of your choosing say the secret oath written on the card and exchange the bracelets, you officially become besties and sisties for the rest of time!
Come see me at table E1A. YEAUH
GO BUY THINGS FROM KATIE LEON
For those of you readers who are into comics/pokemon/digimon and retaining your inner childhood fantasies, check out Monster Pulse by Magnolia Porter. Its a sweet story of a young girl, Bina Blum (featured above) who through some mystical means, develops a monstrous but adorable companion literally made from her heart! So far (the comic is only 35 pages long), its a sweet, heartwarming, beautifully drawn story that has a lot of potential. We’re both pumped to keep reading!
~Sam & eric
Sam and eric debate Super-Hero movies
Part I of an ongoing conversation about comics, super-heroes, film, art, and post-modernism:
eric: My problem with the contemporary super-hero movie is largely this: with the exception of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, the unending slew of (buzzword alert!) post-9/11 super-hero movies is largely the inability of any of these directors or art designers to create a distinct, noticeable, distinguishable, or even coherent visual aesthetic. This argument may be accused of nostalgia, and perhaps rightfully so: I tend to prefer the super-hero films of the 80’s and 90’s to anything that has come out recently. This preference might be tainted by my fond childhood memories, but nonetheless I feel that the quality of these movies far surpass the films of today. While panned by critics and movie-goers alike, even the Joel Schumaker Batman films presented a recognizable visual style with roots in a classic camp or drag aesthetic – hypercolor, heavy makeup, urban gothic, queer coding, and intertextual references to literature and film history. The Tim Burton Batman movies also presented an idiosyncratic take on the Batman mythos tinged with Burton’s own social commentary: the nu-goth look paired with criticism of an inept police force, a sheepish and impotent populace, along with a corrupt government – all flavored with hints of magical realism – are now Burton cliches, but at the time they presented a vastly original remixing of the Batman mythology. Post-Spiderman super-hero movies have become un-original schlock fests devoid of political or social commentary (perhaps with the exception of the X-men series), fueled by testosterone driven heterosexual male fantasies of power, often with racist and misogynistic, and homophobic overtones or undertones. Social underpinnings of the movies aside, the movies don’t look good: the big studios hire a string of interchangeable and modular directors whose penchant for CG driven special effects suck any originality or life out of the films. While the special effects may be impressive, they are far from visually or stylistically interesting. The costuming on these movies, unlike the hyper-stylized films of yore, tend to remain “realistic” and faithful to the source material: see Michele Pfiefer’s cat-woman outfit vs. Halle Berry’s. Super-hero movies continually make money, and the ubiquity of cheap CG effects (instead of complex and elaborately designed tangible set pieces as in the Tim Burton or Schumaker films) will ensure an endless stream of these films on into the future. I make the admission that the campy and cartoony styles of Burton and Schumaker are simply not for everyone, and yet there is a modicum of styles that these directors fail to realize at all: noir, pulp, samurai, retro/vintage, horror, avant-garde; and the studio machine continues to pump out the same bland origins films, with no distinct mise-en-scene over and over. I understand that many of these directors are trying to keep the source material in tact so as to not upset fans: and yet this often comes at the cost of originality, improvisation, and re-interpretation.
Sam: While I agree with your point concerning a consistent aesthetic throughout Superhero film in the past few years (excluding the X-Men franchise and the Chris Nolan Batman films), I have to say that comparing the superhero films of today with the films of the 1990’s is not entirely a fair comparison, largely due to the impact that the Internet has had on the exposure of comic content to the larger mass. Technology has become such a large part of how we consume media. I, for one, used a number of comic new sources and the articles available on Wikipedia to fuel my passion for learning about comic content. The landscape of fandom has changed and with it, the supplementary content created out of comics has changed as well.
I also chalk this change up to the mass media not wanting hyper reality of the 90’s in their media anymore. We aren’t afraid of a technological meltdown or overtake, being consumed by a sentient super-computer or the Y2K virus anymore. We are afraid of air strikes, nuclear invasion and terrorist attacks. 9-11 changed things for America and for the world. People are more fixated on media set in real life situations, a reality that is so close to their own that deals with international enemies and the political and socioeconomic struggle between men. I think what has changed in people isn’t taste in our content but fear. Fear of what is happening in our homeland or what could come from overseas. How many of us know someone fighting in the war now? How long has that been a part of our lives? Over a decade and films like Iron Man, X-Men First Class and Captain America deal directly with those war time themes, allowing people to identify and live through this media, which is what it was originally intended to do. Take a look at the cover of Captain American #1 for example. (Insert Picture) Made during the war effort in March 1941, right in the middle of World War Two, we see the Cap socking Hitler right in the face. This content was made to inspire and lift the spirits of people in need.
Finally, drawing on your point of a cost of originality, improvisation, and re-interpretation, I wholeheartedly agree that it is one of the most depressing parts of the comics industry today. Many of these films (Fantastic Four, The Punisher, The Spirit) are hard to watch and gut wrenching for the long time comics fans, someone who really truly holds a special place in their heart for this content. As awful as these are though, I’ve always felt that these mass media films were never intended to directly please the long time comics fan. Marvel and DC know we are going to see the movies because we care about the content, characters and stories but what they really care about, what they really want to get out of these films, are new readers and lovers of the material. These movies are made to introduce properties to the unaware readers, create new long time fans, sell merchandise and bring money back to the publishing end of the company, to create new stories and to the keep the content we know and love going for a long time. As bad and as painful as they are, these films are helping to keep the industry alive and to keep amazing titles coming out.
All in all, with comics and really any type of media, you have to take the good with the bad.
eric: I very much see the point you are trying to make but I think your argument forgets a few things.
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The media has changed the consumption of comic books and allows fans to more vehemently trace the development of certain fictional characters (thus demanding stricter adherence to the source material). Yes. But this new form of consumption does not preclude the possibility of re-interpretation of source material. Just because comics are being consumed differently does not mean that the films that they are based off of need to be bland.
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The anxieties of post-911 culture are reflected in contemporary super-hero movies (Captain America would probably be the best example of this?). Again, fine. However, I seriously question the ability of these writers/directors/mainstream studios to intelligently and tastefully deal with the ramifications of new anxieties. I personally think that the contemporary super-hero film dumbs down the issues, (super-)flattens the issues. I am not saying that comic books cannot appropriately deal with cultural anxieties, fears, or desires: I think that comic books are often one of the better mediums to deal with these issues through complex and interesting metaphors. What I am saying is that in the re-writing of these stories and their translation into a filmic medium the complexity is completely lost in favor of marketability. In favor of toyetics. So that they are easy to sell to mass-audiences. The metaphor is simplified.
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If we are saying that the goal of a super-hero movie is not to look flashy or pretty or interesting but instead to tell a metaphorical story about a particular cultural anxiety then we forget that aesthetics are a means of telling a story, if not the only way to tell a story. The medium is the message. When Tim Burton uses carnivalesque imagery in the 1990’s it is not simply to create a stylized story of Batman: he is doing so to criticize the media circuses of 90’s culture; as corrupt politicians became increasingly visible in the 90’s, Oswald Cobblepot’s deformed body became an apt metaphor for the corruption of government officials. We do not have to pick sides: we can have a story with original style and we can have original stories with style; the categories are not mutually exclusive. And yet, the contemporary film scene completely forgoes stylistics in favor of CG, “realism”, and modular kitsch.
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Lastly: I totally understand that some of the worst super-hero movies are not intended to be faithful or even interesting but are simply marketing tools to get newer audiences interested in new franchises. I understand that: and, while seemingly deplorable, these new audiences fund bigger and more important works. That being said, I still find it offensive to create movies as marketing tools. Film is an art form, and now films are also advertisements, and I guess, if we want to live in a post-modern capitalist society we just have to accept that. I still find it somewhat appalling that a mega-studio can pump out endless amounts of horrible super-hero films, cannibalizing perfectly interesting material in favor of sales, corrupting and demolishing both the potential of film and comics as art-forms in favor of profit.
So: Whose side are you on?
