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Category: Essays

Our Comics, Ourselves

Our Comics, Ourselves

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OrcaSeveral years ago, I handed my older son my pile of Avengers comics, a sequential trove dating from about 1976 until about 1985.

He read them eagerly, then threw them all over his room. I provided a storage bin and said, “If you want the privilege of reading these, treat them well.”

Message received. The comics, when not in use, lived happily in their bin.

He’s now re-reading them, out of order. He left a couple of them on his bed the other night, and rather than flip out –– “You’re grounded for life, plus I’m confiscating your cell phone! Oh, wait. You don’t have a cell phone. Hmm. Maybe I should confiscate my own cell phone?” –– I elected to simply remind him that my yesteryear treasures need to be treated well.

Then I forgot all about the reminder. I found myself hooked by the back cover of Avengers #164. It was an ad, of course –– what else would grace the back cover of a Marvel Comic? But what an ad, a movie poster extravaganza for (hold me back) Orca (1977).

With Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling, no less.

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Law vs. Chaos replaces Good vs. Evil?

Law vs. Chaos replaces Good vs. Evil?

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swords-dark-magic-256Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders dedicate their sword and sorcery anthology Swords and Dark Magic to Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, and Michael Moorcock as “the great literary swordsmen who made it possible.”  Creating one of the most memorable characters in the genre — the “anti-hero” of Elric of Melniboné — would be enough to earn Moorcock this acknowledgment.  But Strahan and Anders suggest that:

It might be his alteration of the battle of Good versus Evil into that of Law versus Chaos (with disastrous consequences implied if either side ultimately triumphed over the other) that made the most significant contribution to fantasy literature (p. xv).

For those who may be unfamiliar with this distinction, Moorcock’s fantasy universe (or multi-verse) is populated, and seemingly controlled to some extent, by the Lords of Law and the Lords of Chaos. These god-like beings seemingly have mysterious and unfathomable intentions.

But they often appear to desire to exert their Lawful or Chaotic control over mortals and their worlds. As Strahan and Anders note, results are calamitous for any such world and its inhabitants when the scale tips too far towards either Law or Chaos.

No doubt this “alteration” has been significant. Outside the realm of fantasy literature, Moorcock’s Law versus Chaos contrast is most notably seen in the early Dungeons and Dragons rules. Its famous notion of alignment spawned a whole cosmological picture upon which this historically important game was built.  (See Appendix 1 “The Known Planes of Existence” in Deities and Demigods.)

Nevertheless, I disagree with Strahan and Anders’s wording of this LC contrast. They seem to suggest — and they are not the first to do so — that Moorcock’s LC is a replacement of the traditional Good versus Evil dynamic within his famous sword and sorcery tales.

I want to suggest that it is rather an added facet. I’ll look at just one of Moorcock’s famous Elric stories to make this case.

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The Nightmare Men: “The Phantom Fighter”

The Nightmare Men: “The Phantom Fighter”

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adventuresdegrandin‘He was…rather under medium height, but with military erectness of carriage that made him seem several inches taller than he actually was. His light blue eyes were small and exceedingly deep set and would have been humorous had it not been for the curiously cold directness of their gaze. With his blonde moustache waxed at the ends in two perfectly horizontal points and those twinkling, stock taking eyes, he reminded me of an alert tom-cat.’

Such is the stout Dr. Trowbridge’s description of Jules de Grandin, late of Paris, the Surete, and the Sorbonne, upon first meeting the irascible little French physician in the 1925 story, “Terror on the Links”.  Cat-eyed and ebullient, de Grandin is the epitome of the phrase ‘it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.’ He defends Harrisonville, New Jersey, and by extension, all of mankind, against the spawn of Satan, using forbidden knowledge and firearms alike.

Jules de Grandin and his ever-present companion, Dr. Trowbridge, were created in 1925 by Seabury Quinn for Weird Tales and went on to feature in close to a hundred stories, with the last, “The Ring of Bastet”, appearing in 1951. Quinn, in the introduction to the 1976 Popular Library collection, The Adventures of Jules de Grandin, says that de Grandin is ‘…a sort of literary combination of Topsy and Minerva, that is, he just growed.’

It’s hard to imagine it being otherwise, given the sheer vibrancy of de Grandin from the start. De Grandin, like his more passive predecessor Dr. Hesselius, is a physician, and approaches the supernatural as an illness to be confronted. Unlike the kindly Hesselius, however, de Grandin is no amiable general practitioner, but a surgeon — flamboyant, precise, and ruthless.

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Fantasy Face-Off: Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis vs. Robert E Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian

Fantasy Face-Off: Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis vs. Robert E Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian

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Weird Tales, July 1938, featuring Elak of Atlantis in "Spawn of Dagon"
Weird Tales, July 1938, featuring Elak of Atlantis in “Spawn of Dagon”

Now, before I start actually looking at these two heroes, I should probably explain why I’m doing what I’m doing.

You see, when Robert E Howard — creator of the sword and sorcery sub-genre, bare-fisted boxer, and all-round amazing writer — killed himself at the age of thirty, he left a pretty substantial gap in the pulp fiction market, one that was very hard to fill, but one that had to be filled. So Henry Kuttner, a fellow writer more famous for his science fiction than his fantasy, was called in to take up the sword and sorcery mantle — and stumbled in doing so.

The blurb describes the Elak stories as “exciting tales that helped establish a genre,” and “a major step in the evolution of the genre.” (I read Gateways kindle collection.)

Yeah that’s… an overstatement, not much more than a writer’s hyperbole. To be frank, the Elak tales are most easily comparable to a Saturday morning cartoon or a SyFy B-movie, what with all the hackneyed prose and clichéd characters.

Kuttner makes no attempt to advance the formula that Howard established, no attempt to evolve the genre as the over-enthusiastic blurb suggests. What you get instead is a readable adventure, entertaining, but not much more; it’s plot and prose, its action and characters merging with all the other yarns you’ve read and books you’ve consumed.

But then perhaps that’s the point. Pulp is meant to entertain; it’s not The Lord of the Rings or The Game of Thrones, it’s not supposed to make you think or take sides, not intended to evolve anything. Just to entertain.

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Adventure on Film: Flesh and Blood

Adventure on Film: Flesh and Blood

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2206Se_ores_del_AceroFlesh and Blood (1985) is neither high art nor Paul Verhoeven’s best film, but it does contain flashes of genuine magic and an exceptional eye for the grime and grit of Medieval Italy. It also carries its fair share of star power thanks to the presence of Rutger Hauer, Verhoeven’s frequent co-conspirator, as mercenary soldier Martin.

The plot in a nutshell: Martin and his band of trouble-making friends are part of Hawkwood’s Army (though which of Hawkwood’s many armies is allowably unclear), but soon enough Hawkwood turns on his scruffy, ill-mannered war-hounds, stripping them of their pay and their pickings. Demoralized but determined, Martin and company make a break for the countryside, where they kidnap Princess Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh), then hole themselves up in a rural castle in which Agnes teaches her captors, as best she can, the fine arts of civilized behavior. But of course Hawkwood comes calling, paid now to recapture the princess. The clash that follows pits swords against fumbling attempts at science, with bubonic plague waiting in the wings.

Flesh and Blood proves to be a trifle cartoonish at times, a la Robocop, but one thing Verhoeven never lacks is energy. He’s a naughty schoolboy, yes, and at times his fondness for splatter, gore, and, well, flesh, threatens to undermine the film’s highbrow, philosophical script, but he’s also a craftsman with the heart of an animator –– both the camera and its subjects are in almost constant motion –– and provided you’ve got a strong stomach, Flesh and Blood provides ample period entertainment and many a fine battle.

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Weird of Oz on the Art of Rating 3 (of 3)

Weird of Oz on the Art of Rating 3 (of 3)

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bill and ted

“Excellent, Dude! This movie was totally triumphant!… Not since the McKenzie Brothers or the Frog Brothers has a group come along as wild as these Wyld Stallyns…”

So I wrote 24 years ago in my review of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Dude, I totally didn’t talk like that — for those who never saw the movie, I was riffing on the way the characters speak.

Looking back over the review now, I notice that I list the then-unknown actor who played Ted as “Keavy Reeves.” We didn’t have the Internet Movie Database — or the Internet — back then; my guess is I misread the notes I jotted down in the theater.

I also notice it was a decent review that gave readers of the high school newspaper a good grasp of what the film was all about, albeit a bit adverb-heavy: “As one can probably tell this movie had great potential to be utterly stupid. It is on that fine line between being fantastically dumb and riotously hilarious, but it succeeds in being the latter. . . . It is an incredibly funny movie and I declare it excellent.”

2001-A-Space-OdysseySo the review holds up okay. Question is, does the movie? I confess I haven’t watched it in years, but I have seen it several times, and my memories of it are fond ones (it was filmed in the places where I hung out in high school, so it is a trip down memory lane in more ways than one).

When I declared Bill and Ted’s to be “excellent,” was I (aside from playing on the characters’ vernacular) putting it in the same category as 2001: A Space Odyssey? Bill and Ted’s is nominally a science-fiction (time travel) film. Of course, it is primarily a comedy, so was I elevating it to the ranks of Some Like It Hot, Duck Soup, and Dr. Strangelove? (If you haven’t guessed, the answer is Hell no.) This leaves one big question, which brings us to the final topic I wish to consider in this series on the art of rating: When we rate a film (or a book or a television show etc.), what are we rating it against?

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Weird of Oz on the Art of Rating 2 (of 3)

Weird of Oz on the Art of Rating 2 (of 3)

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cs_lewis
C.S. Lewis

Last week, I began my reflections on the art of rating. These thoughts are based on my own 25+ years of reviewing literature and film, as well as on being an avid reader of reviews and follower of particular critics.

To recap, in last week’s post I covered the selection of a ratings scale, which can vary from the most simple “thumbs up/thumbs down” to a more nuanced 10-point scale such as I use (five stars, with half-star increments). I also touched on the implications of being either a stingy or a generous rater.

This week, I’ll delve a bit deeper by considering the importance of establishing one’s viewpoint and communicating that viewpoint (with all its preferences and prejudices) to the reader.

After I see a film, there are two additional pay-offs besides the film-viewing experience itself: 1) (social) discussing the film with friends, family, colleagues who also saw it; and 2) (solitary) paying a visit to rottentomatoes.com, the aggregating site that links to hundreds of reviewers, to find out what amateur and professional critics thought of it. It’s fun to see how one’s own impression compares to the general consensus, and I enjoy those “A-ha!” moments when a critic deftly articulates some emotional or intellectual response the film also evoked in me (or when they wittily trash an aspect of the film that I also abhorred). Doesn’t always happen, even when a critic has assigned to a film the same rating I’ve given it. It goes without saying that we can like the same thing for different reasons; likewise, we can dislike something equally vehemently, but on completely different grounds.

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The Hunger Games and Kids: When to Say When?

The Hunger Games and Kids: When to Say When?

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Mockingjay_PinOn a recent visit, my sister was shocked to discover that my boys had with them a copy of Mockingjay. At first, she assumed it was Corey’s (Corey is nearly thirteen), and was therefore even more horrified to learn that it was Evan’s book. Evan is eight.

My sister accosted me later that night (with my boys and hers all tucked up in various beds, visions of Minecraft dancing in their heads) and asked how I had come to the decision to let Evan tackle The Hunger Games books. She did not approach on an attack vector ––“How dare you let him read this trash!” No, no. Opinionated my sister certainly is, but she’s a smart (and tolerant) cookie.

Even so, my answer took the better part of twenty minutes to deliver, because I myself am puzzled by why Evan is reading The Hunger Games and why I (having viewed The Hunger Games and read Catching Fire) am at least tacitly condoning his choice.

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Weird of Oz on the Art of Rating

Weird of Oz on the Art of Rating

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siskel-and-ebertAs a film and book reviewer for a number of periodicals and websites over the years, I have often wrestled with the art of rating. To some, the awarding of stars to a particular work might seem a simple matter, but there is a craft to it, and it is one of those tasks that can be as complicated as you care to make it — you can assign a rating on gut instinct, jotting down the first number that pops into your head, or you can (as I often do) vacillate back and forth over whether you should add that extra half star.

It is also one of the most subjective undertakings. It is one thing to decide whether you enjoyed a movie; it is quite another to assign it some value on a fixed scale. First off, you, the reviewer, must decide on what criteria and within what framework you are going to base your ratings. In fact, this varies so dramatically from one reviewer to the next that the best you can hope for is to be as consistent as possible with yourself.

Believe me, there is no set, agreed-upon code among professional critics to which you need worry about conforming; you just need to make sure your readers can understand your reasoning. It is also helpful to communicate your personal tastes and preferences insofar as they influence your assessments, so that readers know where you’re coming from. Here are some other considerations…

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The Kids Are Alright: The Fate of the Novel lies in the Hands of Teenagers

The Kids Are Alright: The Fate of the Novel lies in the Hands of Teenagers

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Dinner at Deviant's PalaceLike many authors, I teach writing to help make ends meet. Teaching part-time at a college and an arts high school doesn’t exactly make you rich, but I for one find it very satisfying. One of the obvious perks for me is getting to teach alongside steampunk progenitors Tim Powers and James P. Blaylock, both of whom are fascinating, brilliant men.

The other perk — the less obvious one — is the students themselves.

On one hand, I often find myself wringing my hands like an old fuddy-duddy about how this youthful generation is enslaved by technology. I’ve had two college students this year write about how they were “catfished,” for example, and it’s hard to understand a generation that has made the act of duping someone into having a phony online relationship so commonplace.

And then there’s their obsession with smart phones, providing a constant distraction in the classroom and leading students to shamble mindlessly down the hallways between classes with their phones in their faces, heedless of who or what they bump into. The zombie apocalypse is here already, I tell you!

On the other hand, I’m constantly inspired by my students, both by their creativity and their exuberance for crossing genres and mediums. And really, it all stems from the ubiquity of technology in their lives. Yes, even those damned smart phones.

At the behest of a handful of my high school students this year, I taught a class called Writing for Alternative Mediums (WAM), meaning writing for video games, phone apps, web comics, and whatever else the kids could dream up.

Like any savvy teacher who has no expertise or experience on a given topic, I “taught” the course as a seminar, meaning the students were forced to perform their own self-guided research, develop a project, and then present their work to the class.

The big winner ended up being me.

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