4thletter!

I’ve tripped and fallen across half a dozen links this morning about censorship and labeling and adult material and so on. I figure that’s a sign, so I’m throwing these out for you to check out. Keep in mind that various links may or may not be nsfw.

-Steve Bissette has been doing a great series of retrospectives on a comics controversy from 1986/1987. I came across it via a link to Colleen Doran’s blog, where she discusses her role in the controversy. Bissette has several (prologue, 1, 2, 3, 4) posts up currently, all of which are worth reading. Bissette’s got a really engaging style of writing and does a pretty good job of collating all this data. It’s a fun history lesson.

-Molly Crabapple’s new book, Scarlett Takes Manhattan, is not being carried by Barnes & Noble for being “too pornographic.” Amazon’s got it, though.

-There’s an amendment to a child porn law in Japan being proposed right now that’ll “restrict sexually provocative, “visual depictions” of characters who sound or appear to be 18 years old or younger.” My understanding is that it is broadly worded, poorly researched, and unconstitutional. Yoshitoshi ABe has a particularly interesting opposition to the amendment, and a few dozen manga creators and publishers on Twitter have vocalized their opposition.

I usually hate empty linkblogging, but I’m still organizing my thoughts. I figure I’ll have something tomorrow or the day after. I will say that I am generally anti-labeling/ratings- I don’t think that you can apply a system with an objective scale to something as subjective as art, be it written, drawn, painted, scrawled, filmed, or programmed.

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Tucker Stone compares baby killing at Marvel vs toddler killing at DC:

We at Marvel have always worked to support the trend towards ultraviolence–our readers like it, we like it, and you’d have to be fucking terrified of money to put a leash on Mark Millar. But we’ve always tried to remember that, at the end of the day, we’re making a product, a bit of fun, and that if we take it too seriously, if we try to make some kind of philosophical statement about justice or heroism, we’re going to end up with a dour, boring slice of poorly written shit.

How do you like your brutish and child-like extreme violence? Do you like it to look deeply into your eyes, desperately asking if you get it? Do you understand what has to happen to make a good man do wrong? Do you see how he can’t stop killing, as if he’s developed a taste for blood? Did you see those bloody socks? Do you get it? This is horrible, do you finally understand the stakes?

Or do you like it to be off the cuff violent, an act done simply because That’s What Bad Guys Do, something borrowed from Crank 2 or the best of crime cinema? No message, and no meaning beyond, “Yeah, this guy? He’s a douchebag.”

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There was a huge upset, over at scans_daily, about a week ago.  I know.  How could that happen?  But some of us like scans_daily, in part, because of the fights.  This fight, however, frustrated me, because I’ve seen it too often.

I’ve seen a few too many arguments like this, lately, where someone does something dumb and offensive and then shouts at everyone who bothers to tell them that it’s offensive.  Here are the arguments that they always, always, without fail, make.

1.  But I didn’t know it was offensive.

2.  But I didn’t mean it to be offensive.

3.  But you should have been nicer to me when you explained what was wrong.

Number two has its variations (it was supposed to be funny, it was supposed to be satire, it’s not really important anyway), but number three?  Number three is the catchall.

People who invoke number three will use any excuse in the book to make it work.  They will use the excuse of politeness (there are certain ways we do things), and morality (don’t ever sink to their level!), and location (this isn’t the place for it), and loyalty (but I’m really on your side), and they love using practicality (You shouldn’t have to explain this but otherwise how will they learn?  However will they learn?).

I hate all of those arguments, because all of them - every single thing I’ve listed above - boil down to this assumption:

You have consider my feelings, and I don’t have to consider yours.

That’s what every single person who ever makes those arguments is saying.  That’s all they’re saying. 

And when the original offender himself comes on in the second page to thank the people who ‘defended’ him, and not the people who acquiesced to the demands of all the idiots, waded thigh-deep into the bog, and educated him? 

Man, I’m glad I can’t comment on that site since they moved to dreamwidth.  Trying to get through to him would have been one hell of a waste of a few days.

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I did a thing on Grant Morrison and Sean Murphy’s Joe the Barbarian at Comics Alliance.

It’s a brief over on storytelling in Grant Morrison books. An excerpt:

Reality and fiction feed off of each other in many of Morrison’s works, existing in a state where one is entirely dependent upon the other. Sometimes, they two realities are one and the same. Sometimes, the lines between the two of them are just a little blurred. “Joe the Barbarian” falls firmly into that latter group. Joe himself says that he is a stereotype, just like the bullies who torture him at his father’s gravesite. On at least some level, he’s aware of the fact that everything is a story.

If you didn’t buy Joe the Barbarian this week… you made a mistake. It was only a dollar. Go back to your comic shop and pick it up.

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-I usually say “I don’t really read autobio comics,” but that’s pretty much a lie, I’ve realized. Erika Moen’s DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary is fascinating to me. She ended it yesterweek, and I’ve had it open in a tab ever since, hopping around from strip to strip. It’s really strong and very entertaining. It’s also a little baffling to me, as well. Moen is able to share things on a level I’m completely incapable of duplicating. It’s not that I’m emotionally cold (hey lay-deez, how YOU dooooooin’), it’s just that she’s open in a way that’s both foreign and appealing. It’s good reading, and her farewell strip is a beast. Plus, the series of strips about the guy who pooped on her bathroom floor was funny.

-Emi Lenox’s Emitown is also must-reading, for both similar and different reasons. What I like is that it’s almost like a highlight reel, or skimming someone’s diary. You never know if you’re gonna get a post about one subject or six. It’s a fifty-fifty draw- you’re getting either a single round or buckshot. The only surety is that you’re gonna get shot. Pardon the tortured gun metaphor, what I’m really trying to say is that the strip is entertaining and her art is great. Great emotional work and it never feels cluttered. Look at the faces in this one. I particularly like the bit where the cat laughs at her. Dope sense of humor at work there. She updates throughout the week.

-Julian Lytle’s Ants is more of a sitcom than a serial gag comedy strip. You dip in and out of watching these guys interact with (or talk about) current events, video games, music, whatever whatever. The slanguage is on point, and each strip is just a glimpse into the life of these guys. The latest is part of a series where the ants are riding on Asgard because they’re out of Eggos. Lemme tell you this: I can relate, because if EL Fudges end up shorted? I’m going out masked up, eyebrows down, and a whole bunch of guns on the backseat of the car. Julian updates on Thursdays.

-D-pi’s Gratuitous Ninja has a few episodes out right now, and it’s shaping up to be pretty cool. It’s fresh, working in that same kind of cultural fusion lane as Jet Set Radio Future (sorry kids, I copped that on Xbox and missed it on Dreamcast) ran in. There’s a strong influence from video games, music, Japanese culture, and something I can’t quite put my finger on. I think Ron and I grew up on a lot of the same things, and it’s dope to see that on the page. Check it out on Wednesdays.

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Geoff Klock has a bit on the Callahan/Nevett Splash Page I mentioned and briefly remarked on yesterday.

Between the ages of 15 and 20 I read all the X-Men books for five years — right after Claremont left: Age of Apocalypse, and Generation X and Onslaught, and Stryfe. Then I matured by moving beyond the brand and to the writers. I was in a new decade and the shift made sense. Suddenly I did not care who the hero was: I wanted Morrison's JLA, Miller's Batman and anything by Alan Moore. And I just couldn't invest in the X-Men like I used to.

Good reading. I’m going to have to move my response up a bit, I think, because suddenly it is relevant!

Related: Tucker and Jog totally made out on top of a pile of comic books.

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Free things are awesome, yes? I think so, anyway. Here are some free things that you should check out and enjoy.

-Charlie Huston has more free books for you. This time, it’s the first Joe Pitt casebook, Already Dead. I recently finished the last book in this series, and overall I’m pretty pleased.

It’s available in several formats, all for free, so fire up the ebook reader and get to getting. It’s vampire fiction for people who like it bloody, pulpy, and vulgar, so hey. Get some.

-Takehiko Inoue, creator of Vagabond (my current obsession), has done two basketball manga: Slam Dunk and Real.

No, that isn’t true. He’s done three. Buzzer Beater is online-only, released during a time when people said “World Wide Web,” drawn left-to-right, and in (sometimes garish) computer color. It’s also free. Check the characters here, then click here to begin the first chapter.

It’s a weird basketball manga, and aliens are treated very matter of factly, but it’s pretty enjoyable. I read half of it in one burst and the other half in one sitting, so it’s also pretty gripping. It may have been my first sports manga, because I doubt that Hikaru no Go counts as sports. The story is incomplete, but ends on a note that could easily be a real ending, rather than a cliffhanger.

-Metal Gear Solid is almost definitely my favorite non-Madden game franchise. I love the way that Kojima came up with this amazing story and groundbreaking gameplay, and then wrapped it all up in bizarre plot twists, baffling storytelling decisions, and a thick film of “This is art, that is why this is happening, do you get it?”

And I mean, I love it all unironically and unconditionally. MGS horrifically flawed and amazingly self-indulgent, but it’s given me four games that were some of my favorite gameplay experiences.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have a sense of humor about it all, though. That sense of humor got a workout when a friend pointed me to livejournal user hiimdaisy and her Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater strips. She’s gone through the whole series, so here are some links to posts that are simultaneously huge and hilarious:

MGS: one, two, three, four
MGS2: one, two, three, four
MGS3: one, two, three, four
MGS Portable Ops: one

There are ones for other games (incuding Persona 4!), so poke around the LJ a little bit. All are pretty much hilarious.

-Tim Callahan and Chad Nevett are back with their Splash Page. This time, the question is, “Are Mainstream Comics Increasingly Lame, or is it Just Us?” Parts one and two.

My answer? They’re increasingly lame. DC needed ugly plastic rings to move units and Marvel’s digging this heinous villain hole even deeper and wrecking believability in the process. When your Top Dog Villain kills sixty-thousand people just to get his way, you’re probably a little too extreme, possibly bordering on unbelievably dumb. But hey, keep sliding those colorforms around on the page. Rake in that money.

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-I liked this post by Euge of War Rocket Ajax. It’s not about comics- instead it’s about the Clipse and their place in rap culture. Preorder Til The Casket Drops here, ten bones. It leaked this weekend, it’s dope, get on that.

-I talk about The ‘Nam Volume 1 TPB and a little bit about war comics history over at Comics Alliance.

-Tom Spurgeon wrote a holiday gift guide. Everyone else should just go ahead and bow down, this is extra thorough.

-Matt Thorn discusses manga translation and man, I pretty much agree with him. I’ve had my issues with overly faithful translations, and he does a pretty good job of explaining why. I think approaching a translation project as simply transplanting the language word for word is a huge mistake. There’s something exoticizing about that, too, which makes me a little uncomfortable.

-This shirt is dope.

-Nina Stone’s Virgin Read is no more!

-Look at all these Marvel characters Kurt Busiek co-created!

-Brandon Thomas wraps his New X-Men retrospective.

-Timothy Callahan is basically correct in his look back at Dark Knight Strikes Again.

-Jog talks about manga and Manga. Good thing to wake up to.

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We don’t have a Paypal button on 4l!, mostly because I’m torn on the idea of people just giving money to the site for nothing. I’d rather someone get something in exchange– Amazon and Project Wonderful ended up being perfect for that.

Amazon is running Black Friday deals all week, and if you click this link, you’ll be taken directly to Amazon, where anything you buy gives us a kickback. Theoretically, this works even if you browse around and buy stuff, as long as you came to Amazon via that link. You can also use the search box on the sidebar (it says Amazon Search, you can’t miss it) and get the same result. Same as the Amazon boxes on any review post.

Costs you nothing extra, you get in on some dope deals, and you help me embezzle money pay for 4l!’s hosting. If you aren’t into shopping online… no bigs. Thanks for reading anyway.

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gottsuiiyan at The Eastern Edge bought the new issue of Switch Magazine, and it’s got a feature on the new One Piece movie, Strong World. One Piece is basically the best adventure comic, so I’m looking forward to Strong World. Especially if it has stuff like this:

That mooseasaurus rex in the link looks great, too. Good to see that Oda’s Nami is still 2/3 legs, too.

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