Category: writing

Electric Juxtapostion: “I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone” and “City of Electric Light” by Richard Brautigan and Chad VanGaalen

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

I came across Brautigan’s story on Flickr. It made me think right away of Chad VanGaalen’s beautiful song.  Begging your pardon as I channel my inner teaching assistant: What do you make of this juxtaposition? Different crafts and media, both discovered and shared on the internet, both hewn here in bits of data and binary code.  Are these pieces complimentary or contrary? Which one speaks to you more? Is one enriched by its presentation with the other?  Are both? I should point out that the video was made by a fan.  The scan of Brautigan’s story was, too.

r_brautigan

DC Reboot: Batman #1, Nightwing #1. What, All of the Sudden We’re Not Wearing Tights Anymore?

~ Chris Cocca ~ 4 Comments

This is from BleedingCool.  It’s the cover to the rebooted Batman #1.

I see Two-Face, Croc, Scarecrow, and the Riddler.  Not sure who the guy getting punched is.  The Riddler has a green question mark shaved into his head. Two-Face looks like a teenager.  Consider yourself retconned.

I do wonder if DC will keep a line of some of their iconic heroes in the old continuity even while relaunching them.  Can Batman #1 be the reboot with some other book carrying on the current stories?  All the other current Batman books are getting rebooted.  Also, Nightwing is going to wear the Robin costume from the movies, minus the cape, and with red lenses.

 

The Oldest Injustice

~ Chris Cocca ~ 2 Comments

Eugene Cho has a new post up today titled “the oldest injustice in human history is the way we treat women.”   I’m not 100 percent certain that this injustice is older than, say, the way have historically treated disabled people, children, or the elderly, but it must be close.  Certainly, the first time Male Prime treated Female Prime as an inferior, this injustice occurred, and it’s probably safe to assume that act took place before Couple Prime became the Prime Parents or the world’s first elderly people.  I forgot to mention the way we have historically treated other life on earth as a candidate for primeval evil, but you get the idea.

Certainly, the mistreatment of women is one of the longest running forms of human wickedness running through our histories and cultures down into the present.  As we all know too well, religions, even those that sprang from ostensibly egalitarian enterprises like, say, Jesus’ Kingdom of God, have very often codified and sanctified the wholesale marginalization of our sisters.  Christianity, the religion that is nothing if not a collective response to the person and persona of Jesus in history, ought to be a wellspring of egalitarian kerygma and joy.  After all, it was the women, we remember, who first saw the Risen Lord.  It was the women who went on to tell the male disciples.  It was a woman, Lydia, who first embraced the Christian story in continental Europe. It was a woman, favored by God, who bore the child Jesus.

But even now, in 2011, Christianity must contend with Christians. The Catholic Church doesn’t ordain women and doesn’t allow priests to marry, both suggesting a supervaluation of men and of one very narrow interpretation of the Apostle Paul’s disparate charges to disparate ancient churches.  While they all allow clergy to marry, something like 50% of American Protestant denominations bar women from service at the highest levels of authority, leadership, and power.  They do so, at base, from the same limiting hermeneutic keeping women from the Catholic priesthood.

I wrote a piece last month about some of this at The Huffington Post.  It’s a hard thing, isn’t it, being a religious progressive and feeling quite illiberal toward illiberal views?  You know, I used to think so.  With sincere respect to those who disagree with my perspective from a place of good will, I’m just too concerned that too many people arrive at loud, unjust conclusions for reasons that have nothing to do with the hoped-for peaceable kingdom.  I’m too concerned that every nuanced exposition of the subordinate role of women runs contrary to everything that seems plain and clear to me about the Gospel, and, worse, that it in small or big ways baptizes a world culture that continues to oppress women simply because they are not men. I’m too horrified by the rising rates of gay suicide to stomach any more “it’s right there in English” appeals to passages in scripture that, taken on their surface, seem to condemn our homosexual sisters and brothers to the flames of hell.

I don’t think this makes me a bad progressive. I don’t think Tom Paine can be faulted for failing to honor and respect the Townshend Acts in the name of pluralism.  I don’t think the abolitionists and the suffragists were wrongly intolerant of the ill-conceived perspectives and political machines that kept slaves and women down. I don’t think the Civil Rights movement was wrong for failing to appreciate the nuances of a national tradition that stood in fundamental conflict with the nation’s founding promise, and I don’t think progressive Christians are wrong for refusing to let gender inequality stand when it runs so contrary to the ethics of the order Jesus lived and taught us to inherit.

I don’t assume the worst of lay people who disagree with my sexual hermeneutics. I don’t even assume the worst of educated people who don’t share my view (the worst in this case being a conviction that they’re outright bigots), but I do have real problems when pastors, scholars, and people who have been trusted by millions of people to know better do gymnastics not to.  When the spirit of the Gospel is overshadowed but what they want Paul to have meant or in plain, contemporary English, or by what they believe, on some other authority, about what scripture is or isn’t.  When the things Paul said overshadow the things Jesus did, and the things Jesus is doing, there’s problem.

What is Jesus doing?  Only freeing people.  Only inviting them to imagine and inhabit a kingdom where his ethics and the peace of God are one, only calling us to live in that kingdom now, only hoping we abandon every unjust inclination to the vision of a commonweal in and for a world that ought to be scandalized by our excessive generosity and not, as too often is the case, our stingy, meager Gospel, our profound skill at exclusion, our hordes of grace reserved for those already favored by circumstance and by our own worst inclinations.

DC Comics Reboot: Is the Justice League too White?; Superman Misplaces Vital Item

~ Chris Cocca ~ 9 Comments

The reboot in question is 2011’s New 52.  A lot has changed since then, but a lot of this still holds up.  From 2011: 

I’m just going to go ahead and be a nerd here for a few minutes.  DC Comics is renumbering three-quarters of their titles with 52 new Issue #1’s staggered weekly beginning August 31.  That’s essentially a reboot, right?  DC honchos are calling it a new point of entry for a new generation of readers, which makes sense given the massive platforms offered by the popularity of superhero movies and merchandising.

Fine. Actually, more than fine.  I think it’s a great idea. A lot of fanboys think it’s long overdue after the almost-reboots of the last few years, but I think the timing is perfect.  I think it’s great and I look forward to it.  It might get me to start subscribing to a few regular titles again, which would be a lot of fun (especially since I have a vintage grocery store comics rack that I can’t fit my bagged and boarded 90’s books in). What I’m not so sure about is the new Justice League roster (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Aquaman, and … Cyborg?)

I’m always of the opinion that the Justice League should be Superman, Batman, The Flash, Wonder Woman, a Green Lantern, and Aquaman.  I left out Green Arrow.  Maybe I shouldn’t have.  Is he iconic? Green Arrow is on the bubble, like the letter y.  He’s a legacy character with classic runs in the 70s, and he’s the team’s resident dissident/progressive.  He’s the League’s only bow-and-arrow guy, so there’s that.  But he’s not an archetype like the Big Three, and he doesn’t stand in for great elemental and cosmic forces (Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern).  The same’s true for Cyborg, and so I’m conflicted.  Nothing against Vic, but neither his history nor his skill-set seem to bring something essential, or quintessential, to the team.

I know without Vic, the team is all-white, and I don’t think that’s acceptable.  Who’s the most iconic of all the non-white characters in the DCU?  John Stewart as the Green Lantern?  Absolutely.  He was the best character on the the animated Justice League series not named Batman (sorry, John, but Bats will always be my favorite), and, truth be told, he carried the show and the team.  Justice League established him in popular media as a quintessential character to the JL mythos, and it wasn’t because of his green ring.  It was because of how awesome, conflicted, and noble he was.  What does Hal Jordan really bring to the table? I know, I know, he’s the Silver Age original, but while he was away, John Stewart became the definitive Green Lantern for me, even as Wally West became the Flash.  Sorry, but that’s just how I see it.  Somewhere, someone is saying “what about Kyle Rayner?”  Exactly.  Loved him.  Haven’t thought about him in years.

I’d bump Hal and Cyborg and sign John up in a heartbeat, if he’d take the job.  If DC is also hoping to skew younger with the Cyborg character (he’s historically been cast as younger than the DCU’s banner heroes), what about Static?  Isn’t his full inclusion in the top narratives of the DCU long overdue?  Wouldn’t putting Static in the JLA add some much-needed youth and also be a more-than-fitting tribute to the late Dwayne McDuffie?  No one else pictured above has Static’s elemental kind of powers.  There’s a fast guy, a strong girl, a strong guy, a dark avenger guy, a mystical space military guy, a water guy.  Where’s the electric guy?  Static to the Justice League the second I’m in the door at Editorial. (Also, Pete Rose to the Hall of Fame).

All of this still leaves us with a relatively undiverse grouping, but it’s a step in the right direction.  Where’s Martian Manhunter, by the way?  I know he’s dead in current continuity, and I’m guessing that he’ll appear later in the series like he did way back when in the original. Speaking of which, I know that Supes and Batman weren’t part of the old league back in the day, but whatever. I’m writing about comic books so I get to say that.

On to my second issue.  It has to do with costumes.  Wonder Woman’s change is long overdue, but they should have kept some yellow.  Black threads on a color palette that doesn’t historically have them are gimmicky in baseball and gimmicky in comics. Aquaman looks great, which is sometimes hard for Aquaman to do. This look honors his history even as the military collar recalls his finest hours as my harpoon-handed beard-twin.  (His current incarnation on Batman: The Brave and The Bold is brilliant and my undeniable favorite).  The Flash has those weird piping lines on his cowl, which is to be expected with these kind of reboots. If you look closely, Batman probably has them, too, and his gauntlets are more modular and armor-like.  Fine, though I like a cleaner cowl for Batman. Flash’s chin thing is meant to make his ensemble look younger, hipper.  Fine.

But sweet Siegel and Shuster, where on Krypton are Superman’s red briefs?  What’s with the bishop/general collar?  I only just now noticed the blue on blue gauntlet piping and red sleeve trim.  Is that a red belt?  I can only imagine what his boots look like.  This feels a lot like the future version of Superman that Connor Kent/Superboy became a while back in Teen Titans.  I thought then that the evolution of this look might work over time, but this seems so sudden, so…drastic.   This is Superman we’re talking about.  I know he’s been changed in varying degrees over the years, but the late Golden Age and Silver Age look has been kept largely intact until now.  The lack of briefs is shocking, but the collar bugs me most.  It looks way too Zod for Kal.  And now that I’ve lost most of my regular readers, I bid you a fond “till next time!”

Robert McKee’s One-Hour MFA

~ Chris Cocca ~ 3 Comments

I haven’t watched this whole video yet, but any time successful people talk about the crafts of writing and storytelling, it’s worth checking out.  When you have an hour to spend, why not spend it with Robert McKee?  Yes, yes it is good enough for me.  Good enough for me and Bobby McKee.