SIR

The Punisher #1

I must be missing the gene that makes crime / police procedural stuff appeal to a person. I read a comic like this and it's hard for me to even keep my eyes on the page, they just slide off like I'm looking at a blank wall. Is this a well-made comic book? I can't even answer that question because the very premise is so far and away from anything I'm interested in reading that I can't possibly judge.

For me, at least, the Punisher's appeal comes from the juxtaposition between his black & white, pulpy roots and the technicolor fantasy context of the Marvel Universe. He's a noirish figure who could have stepped out of any men's adventure magazine published between 1930 and 1970, a bloodthirsty urban vigilante stuck in a world of superheroes. The Punisher on his own outside the Marvel Universe is just another guy with a gun - which is something that the makers of the Punisher films, to their detriment, haven't quite realized how to make interesting. The right tone to strike with the Punisher is just slightly absurd, leaving the protagonist as a kind of straight man placed in an incrementally exaggerated version of the "real" world, be it the world of superheroes or something else. No flies on Garth Ennis's Punisher: even in his MAX stories Ennis understood the fact that the Punisher has to have something slightly larger-than-life to work against to keep him from becoming a garden-variety thug. Accordingly, is run was partly defined by the horror-tinged macabre tone of bookends The Tyger, Born and The End.

These things can go badly wrong, of course - go too far to one extreme of tonal juxtaposition and you risk doing something stupid like making him temporarily black or turning him into a renegade angel warrior. The Punisher is less about character and plot than tone and execution, and these are hard attributes to fudge. Mike Baron understood this perfectly. His run was never particularly original but he knew how to write the best kind of action stories - overheated like an 80s action movie, filled with mustache-twirling villains who deserved their inevitable comeuppance, which they received in superbly improbable action sequences. If you've seen Stallone's Cobra or Schwarzenegger's Raw Deal, then you should be able to understand the appeal of the Punisher in the late 80s and early 90s. These weren't really "serious" stories because they were obviously hyperventilated boy's fantasies, and could only be taken seriously with at least part of the tongue planted firmly in cheek.

The best Punisher story since Ennis left the franchise was undoubtedly Rick Remender's "Frankencastle" sequence - a story that worked where "Angel Punisher" failed through consistently strong execution and a precise understanding of exactly how to play the character. The Punisher is the man who keeps his head and stays 100% consistent in any and every situation: even when he's been turned into a giant Frankenstein's monster, he remains focused on nothing more and nothing less than killing bad guys in the most efficient way possible. In theory you could write a decent Punisher story in any genre if you just stayed true to the character's core tone - and certainly, there have been good funny Punisher stories, good fantasy-tinged Punisher stories, good sci-fi Punisher stories, even a handful of Punisher romance stories. As long as the Punisher remains the Punisher, the concept is pliable, all the more so for its stark simplicity.

But this? The first issue of Greg Rucka's anticipated run? I just don't understand how this is anyone's idea of a good comic book. There's no high concept here, barely any concept at all besides the most bafflingly, numbingly literal take on the character: criminals kill people, the Punisher kills them, rinse and repeat. It's strictly a police procedural with organized crime or terrorists or something like that. The Punisher, for one, is barely in it - he shows up at the end to shoot some people after almost a whole issue of nothing much happening. I thought the days of the heroes barely appearing in the comics were gone with Bill Jemas? There's cops at crime scenes and crooks gathering in underworld bars and oh god I'm getting bored just typing it. I don't like crime stories, that's an admitted weakness on my part, but come on: how is this anyone's idea of an interesting comic book? You're telling me you've been given the opportunity to write superhero comic books, a medium and a genre where literally almost anything is possible in the hands of an experienced practitioner, and this po-faced Law & Order-meets-Bernhard Goetz slash fiction is what you want? Really? For a comic book in the year 2011 to be so derivative and so uninteresting, and yet to take itself so damn seriously, is nothing less than a complete abdication of creative responsibility on the part of the creators involved. You really have to get up pretty early in the morning to craft something as willfully mediocre as this.

Is this what "real" Punisher fans want? Hardcore crime fiction with nary a trace of the fantastic, either in tone or content? Well, damn, I guess you get your wish then. I'll just wait a few years until sales drop back to cancellation levels and they turn Frank into a space alien for six issues.

Doctor Doom's Mailbag

Doctor,

I noticed recently that you sided with that dastardly fiend the Red Skull in one of his many attempts to destroy the United States and crush Captain America. I was wondering, since you have a long history of enmity with the Red Skull, just why you decided to help the ex-Nazi.

Sincerely,
S. Rogers, Washington, D.C.

This is a very good question, and one which Doom sees no harm in answering in as frank a manner as possible. It is well-documented, after all, that Doom and the Skull were hated enemies for a very long time. Considering the many times that the Skull has tried - obviously unsuccessfully and futilely - to kill me and conquer Latveria, it might seem incongruous that I would stoop to aid my most bitter enemy in his latest futile scheme to conquer the United States. Yet I trust that my reasoning is not overly opaque to anyone with so much as a modicum of sense.

To put it as succinctly as possible: the Red Skull is an idiot. It is true that he can be dangerous under certain circumstances. There are few creatures so wretched on this world as the Red Skull, and the depths of his hatred towards every living being are truly astounding. But this monomaniacal focus on spite and loathing leaves him fatally blinkered, unable to see beyond the limited realm of his obsessions and fixations. He was once a Nazi, and remains very much the product of the Third Reich's institutionalized state torture regime. He is a ruthless, capable killer who no doubt rejoiced at every tear shed by my gypsy ancestors as he oversaw the mass exterminations at Buchenwald and Chelmno. But he has long since abandoned any pretense of remaining faithful to the discredited racial paranoia of Nazi Germany. He is no longer a German Nationalist, as he has been anathematized and disowned by a country that now rightly sees him as a deeply humiliating reminder of their most shameful history. He is a man without a country and without ideals, a creature born only to foment distress and promulgate his vision of the world as a barbarian arena of endless cruelty perpetrated against the weak.

But the important question remains: given all of this information, has the Skull ever actually achieved anything of importance? Hasn't he been defeated time and time again, either by the superior cunning of his foes or the misery of his own hubris? Is there any doubt whatsoever that he is one of the the most hated men on the planet, aided only by a small coterie of like-minded thugs who are relentlessly undone by their own sniveling devotion to such a pitiful figure? He is, not to put too fine a point on it, a joke. It does not help matters that his sworn arch-foe is one of the few so-called "super-heroes" whose competence and courage earn the admiration even of Doom. Captain America is a man with whom to be reckoned, and so long as the Skull remains fixated on the Captain he will remain a hollow, impotent figure, easily checked by his betters.

So why give aid to such a loathsome figure? As a self-identified villain, the Red Skull is quite simply a tool par excellence. He can dependably be counted on to sow chaos and destruction in his wake, while just as dependably self-destructing before ever truly causing irreparable damage. Why not give him passive aid and encouragement, supporting his plans inasmuch as they are certain to inconvenience my own enemies and potentially achieve some degree of salutary success? The Skull could never represent any real threat to Doom. There is no profit to be gained in actively working towards his destruction while he can still be useful. Given enough time the Skull will always destroy himself. And for so long as he remains active, it costs Doom nothing to humor him, to allow him to cherish the misconceptions that we are in any way equals and that I have forgotten his past transgressions, all the while gleefully toasting his inevitable humiliation and well-deserved defeat.

Dr. Doom,

Something I've been wondering for quite some time - please forgive me if you've heard this one before - but who is more dangerous, you or Lex Luthor?

Sincerely,
C. Kent, Metropolis

If there is one subject - besides the accursed Richards! - which Doom detests above all others, it is surely the incessant comparisons to the Lex Luthor that have plagued me for decades. The very idea is simply too absurd to seriously contemplate. Yet, since the subject recurs with an annoying regularity, I will address it once again in the hopes of finally putting a rest to this most insipid of subjects.

Lex Luthor is a fool. His supposed brilliance is the product of a lifetime's theft and cunning. His skill, if it can be called such, is simple ruthlessness: he is nothing more than a petty criminal with delusions of grandeur. Whatever rudimentary intelligence he might possess is perpetually wasted in his rivalry with the alien Superman. If he were sincere in his desire to devote his life to the supposed "benefit" of humanity, it would be a simple manner to surpass his petty resentments in order to truly devote himself to these lofty, if foolhardy, ideals. But he remains fatally fixated on his inability to overcome one single vexing opponent, and this unconscionable fixation is the unambiguous source of his repeated defeats.

Setting aside these embarrassing neuroses, his personal abilities are barely adequate. As a scientist he is an excellent businessman, by which I mean that without a great deal of money with which to buy the finest scientific minds, he would have no means with which to replenish the stock of superior weaponry with which he vexes the Kryptonian. It is no great matter to be a plutocrat in the industrialized west. Money can buy many things but it cannot purchase strength. Where in Lex Luthor is any strength to match the will of Doom, the same will that cowed the mighty Beyonder? The same might that humbled great Galactus? The same courage that awed malefic Mephisto? Shorn of his stolen wealth and bought weaponry, bereft of the underlings whose uncertain allegiances he has purchased and the "allies" who seek only to betray him at any sign of weakness, Lex Luthor is merely a weak, bald man.

Stripped of armor and naked, Doom could still crush Luthor to death with his bare hands, raze his ostensible "empire" to the ground and pour a glass of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1945 over the smoldering ashes.

Dear Doctor,

I was wondering who would win in a fight between you and Lord Voldemort. I bet you could take him.

Yours,
H. Granger, London

Although I cannot but admire Voldemort's ambition and foresight, he nevertheless poses little in the way of a threat to Doom. As with most of his wizard brethren, his dependency on physical wands in order to channel his power renders him highly vulnerable without this tool. Additionally, his almost total disdain for "Muggle" science makes him easy prey for any number of strategies outside the realm of magic. While it is true that with his wand he is a formidable foe, a disarmed Voldemort would die like any other human if you shot them in the head. The ability to speak to snakes will avail you little when you have been bound and gagged by the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, helpless at the tender mercies of Doom.

Enough! Doom grows weary of this unending avalanche of idiocy.

Comicon News Roundup

Fantagraphics to publish Complete Four Color

Fresh off recent convention-season announcements that venerable art comics publisher Fantagraphics had secured reprint rights to the classic EC Comics library as well as the groundbreaking underground anthology Zap, the publisher announced their further acquisition of the reprint rights to one of the most important series in the history of comics: Dell's long running Four Color series.

"This announcement is a long time coming," states Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth. "Over the years we've become adept at working with a wide range of rights holders in order to reprint a large variety of archival material running the gamut from Charles Schulz's Peanuts and E. C. Segar's Thimble Theater through to Floyd Gottfredson and Carl Barks' classic Disney comics. Licensing the Four Color series required working not only with Dell itself through Random House, but with the rights holders for every individual licensed feature published in the magazine's long run. Thankfully, our relationship with Disney meant a large chunk of the prime material was already squared away, but that still left Warner Brothers [Dell published the Looney Tunes characters side-by-side with their Disney counterparts for decades], in addition to other properties as diverse as Raggedy Ann & Andy, Felix the Cat and Zane Grey's Westerns.

"It's taken - no exaggeration - years of diligent work to bring together all the rights holders. But it'll all be worth it be able to present the highest-selling and most influential comic series in history in strict historical continuity. There's a lot of work here that contemporary readers are completely ignorant of - Jack Callahan's Tillie the Toiler, for instance, is really going to wow people. Just the other day I was poring over a stack of Harvey Eisenberg's amazing Charlie McCarthy books - these stories definitely deserve their chance to once more stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Barks' more famous Ducks."

"We haven't completely finalized the details of the books, but we're most likely looking at publishing the series five issues at a time, in oversized hardcovers that will probably come out to around $40. If we can keep to a strict quarterly schedule, we'll be on track to finish the Complete Four Color in only 67 years, give or take. I think any serious historian of the medium is going to want to find room on their shelf for these books."

R. Crumb takes the reigns of Iron Fist

In a surprise announcement on Saturday's Cup of Joe panel, Marvel CCO Joe Quesada stunned panel attendees by introducing perhaps the last creator anyone expected to see in residence at the House of Ideas: legendary underground comics pioneer R. Crumb. Crumb will be writing and drawing a relaunch of Marvel mainstay Iron Fist to be set in the immediate aftermath of the company's line-wide Fear Itself event.

"I'd been talking to Joe off and on for years about doing some work for Marvel, but the timing never seemed right before now. But since I wrapped work on my Book of Genesis adaptation, I'd been casting around for my next project. By happy coincidence I happened to run into Joe and he let it slip that Iron Fist was going to be left in a particularly interesting situation in the immediate wake of Fear Itself. After a little bit of prodding he explained exactly what Iron FIst's new status quo entailed, and the more I heard the more I realized that these were stories I wanted to be a part of telling."

When asked by audience members why the notoriously independent Crumb was making a move to Marvel after almost five decades of independent publishing, the underground pioneer demurred. "I don't think it's as much of a stretch as some people are likely to believe. In hindsight I think it's obvious that a lot of my career has been building towards working with Marvel. I'm finally ready, I think, to put my nose to the grindstone and built up a nice, long run. That I've been given the opportunity to work with such an iconic character as Iron Fist is just icing on the cake."

"There are probably some old underground fans who are going to be disappointed that I'm working at Marvel, but I'm confident that once people start seeing these pages any objections are going to be completely forgotten. This is some of the best work of my career. I really feel that this is the work I'm going to be remembered for."

When asked about the new series direction, Crumb was chary. "Basically, there's a lot I can't say because, well, we're going to be picking up almost immediately after the final pages of Fear Itself and Joe here would have to kill me if I gave away the ending! But rest assured, longtime Iron Fist fans are going to be pleasantly surprised - we're happy to be picking up on Matt [Fraction]'s work both in Fear Itself and The Immortal Iron Fist, sort-of dovetailing a number ideas that have been put out over the last few years about just where Danny Rand fits into the cosmology of the Marvel Universe. He's going to be a major player in the next year, he's still going to be in New Avengers and also in The Defenders. It's a good time to be an Iron FIst fan. This book is going to be ground zero for some very important developments that are going to be felt throughout the Marvel Universe. That's all I can say for now."

Finally, Crumb concluded with a few specifics to appease still-curious audience members. "Alright, I will say there's a lot we don't know about the Seven Cities of Heaven. That's something I really want to explore, so be on the lookout for that. And also - OK, I'll just say, sometime in the first six months we're going to be seeing a big fight with Darkhawk, simply because," Crumb concluded with a laugh, "I've always wanted to see who would win in a fight between Iron Fist and Darkhawk."

Harry Potter comes to DC

In a move many feel was years overdue, it was finally announced that DC Comics would be publishing a comics adaptation of the enormously successful Harry Potter series of novels.

"I'm thrilled to say that, after years of work, Harry Potter is finally coming to DC," co-publisher Dan Didio announced to thunderous applause on Friday. "You may have heard of this guy," Didio say, gesturing towards a large slide of the iconic boy wizard atop his trademark racing broom, "he had a movie out not too long ago, some low-budget independent thing. It made a few dollars." The audience laughed: the highly anticipated eighth and final film in the Potter franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 has broken worldwide box office records in recent weeks.

"Harry Potter is one of the biggest entertainment brands in the world, and his entrance into the world of comics is years - decades - past due," Didio continued. "This is one of those instances where our creative synergy with Warner Brothers [makers of the Harry Potter films] really paid off. After some initial discussion, we realized that not producing comics to tie-in with these phenomenal books and movies was really just leaving money on the table.

"Comics have a huge advantage over any other medium, in that our production budget is limited only by our imagination. We have as much space as we feel necessary to do these books justice, and we're working very hard to make these comics the most accurate and exhaustive adaptation possible. Harry Potter fans love every word, every supporting character and every scene, and we're going to take advantage of the medium to show you every detail of Harry's world, including all the stuff they just couldn't show in a two- or three-hour film. Whether you've been a fan since the first book or you've just recently jumped onboard the Hogwarts Express, we want readers to feel like they're coming home with these books.

"We know Harry Potter is immensely popular, and even with no new books or movies on the horizon he's likely to remain popular for a long time to come. We could probably make money by publishing 22-blank pages with Harry Potter's name on them every month" - the audience laughed again at this line - "but we've taken steps to secure the best talent we could, the most qualified creators in our stable and the ones we feel best suited to meeting the creative challenges presented by Harry and his world. We're pleased to announce that J. T. Krul will be spearheading the adaptation, with Philip Tan on art. I was happy to be able to work with Philip on Outsiders, and his skill has grown in leaps and bounds in the last year. When you see his Potter work, you're going to be blown away, he's really taken it to the next level."

Didio concluded his presentation with an admission of the unique opportunities presented by adapting such a popular and well-known franchise. "I think anyone coming to these books is going to be impressed, whether they've been reading comics their entire life or whether this is their first time. We know these books are going to be huge. We know that Harry Potter has the potential to be a lot of people's first comic. We want to do our best to put the medium's best foot forward."

And You May Find Yourself In Another Part Of The World



I moved to Massachusetts in late October 2003, and began The Hurting in January of 2004. A week and a half ago I moved out of Massachusetts and back home to California. It had been, all told, an exile of exactly eleven years: I moved away from the west coast in June of 2000 (to Oklahoma, where I lived for three years), and marked my official return in July of 2011.

Moving is terrible. I've certainly done it a few times over the years: I lived in five different houses in Massachusetts, which adds up to a lot of unpleasant lifting and carrying, to say nothing of dismantling and reconstructing cheap furniture. But hopefully this will be the last move for the considerable future.

In the beginning and for a few years thereafter this blog had a decidedly more personal bent - which was not so much an intentional focus as an unavoidable consequence of the unpleasant circumstances surrounding my life at the time. I was living in the middle of what could only in hindsight be described as a slow-motion nervous breakdown, unemployed, in a shack in the middle of the woods with a crumbling marriage. (Hindsight being 20/20, the writing had been on the wall regarding the marriage for a long time, but it took a while before either of us realized that fact.) The reason this blog was titled The Hurting wasn't just tongue-in-cheek - there was a thick layer of real bleakness caked underneath the orange Blogspot template.

If you have had a blog for any amount of time, you should be intimately familiar with the unpleasant sensation of rereading your earliest posts. For me, however, the sensation is doubly unpleasant on account of the fact that my circumstances have changed to such a significant degree that I can barely recognize the person who wrote the first few years of this blog. It's been a long time since we were so poor I had to beg readers for money to buy groceries (that grocery money actually appeared is one of the great miracles of my life). It's been a long time since the "we" in question was a going concern. Now the "we" in question is entirely different, and the person with whom I moved to California represents a definite and marked improvement over the one with whom I moved to Massachusetts. I've gone from working the night shift at a children's mental hospital to working in academia. A working scholar and a teacher, of all things. Jesus H. Christ!

After having lived there for almost eight years, I can say with some degree of confidence that New England sucks. I'm sure it works fine for Andrew Weiss and Kevin Church, but I'm simply ecstatic to once again be in the land of Mike Sterling and David Brothers. It's not the winters, as most people would maintain - I grew up in the cold parts of California, after all, so I'm hardly a stranger to the snow. But there's something indefinably uncomfortable about the region, a coldness that goes deeper than the weather if you get my drift. If you weren't born there, it's hard to really make yourself fit - which is in itself an odd thing to say about a region filled to the brim with immigrants - but there you have it. Whenever people found out that I had come from California, they're first question was always "what the hell are you doing in Massachusetts?" In all the years I lived there I never found a good answer, and I still don't have one. Thankfully, it's not a problem anymore. The whole place may be two minutes away from falling down around my shoulders at any moment, but I'm back in California, and be it ever so humble there's no place like home. (And, not for nothing, it's worth pointing out that even with a crumbling infrastructure, the roads out here are still better than the roads in good ol' Taxachusetts - and no tolls to ride the damn freeway, either.)

I'm not a superstitious person - or more precisely, I'm one of those people who always likes to say he's not superstitious, but is in fact just as superstitious as the next person. It is therefore submitted without comment that upon returning to California the very first song heard on the radio in the rental car on the way from the airport to town was "Once In A Lifetime" by the Talking Heads. Don't ask me how, but David Byrne knows these things.

Now might be the time you could reasonably expect me to say something along the lines that, given the change in circumstances over these past eight years, The Hurting has run its course and it's time to put the blog to bed. Well, fuck that shit, you should know me better by now. We're gonna rock it till the wheels fall off. Stay tuned for more half-assed content delivered on a completely inscrutable timetable from now until the end of the world.

DON'T BUG ME