The Hurting's Weekly Out-Of-Context Mark Trail Panel

For the Week of 01/18/06

TIME FOR ME TO PUT ON MY TIN-FOIL HAT



(One raccoon appearance is a fun coincidence. Two in the space of a single week is getting kind of surreal. Do you think Elrod is reading this? Do you think he knows what I'm thinking? These are his special messages to me, encoded in the thoughts of his magic cartoon raccoons, thoughts which only I can read.)

For the Week of 01/11/06 For the Week of 01/04/06
Year One

Trapped in the Closet

I was planning on writing more about Superman this week - and believe me, I will - but I came across something else of interest this weekend, and it occurred to me that it might just be of interest to those who read this blog.

(Incidentally, is there anything more nerdy in all the world than arguing over the best Superman? As much fun as these types of conversations can be, I always feel a bit guilty that I'm not exerting my mental energies on something else. But you go where the muse* takes you, as it were . . . I haven't been buying many new comics lately, so I get stuck thinking about old, crappy comics that probably don't deserve the effort to begin with. But, c'est la vie.)

Anyway, this weekend, thanks to the glory that is Netflix, I finally saw R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet Parts 1-12. Man, this thing is nuts. There really is no other word to adequately describe something so willfully odd. It is so weird it crosses over into the realm of absolutely compelling, and I think it's probably one of the most memorable things I've seen in quite some time.

Now, let me say that I'm not an R. Kelly fan. I think the vast majority of modern R&B is pure crap. I think, furthermore, that R. Kelly himself is something of a loathsome individual, based on his well-publicized predilection for peeing on underage girls. (Of course, consensual sex with a minor - even bizarre sex acts like those - is still only statutory rape. Therefore, while it may be far from "good", it's still an order of magnitude less loathsome than outright rape or molestation. As such, I think that R. Kelly is probably less than outright sinister, more like a little bit disturbed from having been in the Famous People Bubble for so long. I bet if you had thousands of women and girls literally throwing themselves at you for decades on end, you'd probably have some weird and self-justified ideas about sex as well. I say all of this not to absolve or ameliorate but merely to contextualize.)

And hoo-boy, does Trapped in the Closet offer some context. It's impossible to watch the series without keeping Kelly's offstage exploits in mind, and really, I think that it would be counter-indicated to do so. Anyone who keeps an eye on the music business (and everyone who reads this blog knows that I devote a large portion of my energies to that field as well as comics) has seen R. Kelly's output explode in the last few years. He was already a prolific artist, but since the sex tape and other related allegations surfaced, he's been recording, touring and producing like a man possessed. Considering how deracinated and anesthetized most modern pop is, R. Kelly's recent output has been remarkable for its not-so-subtle ongoing subtext. The ongoing conflict between his public shenanigans and his private conflict reaches its zenith with the Trapped in the Closet series.

It was interesting for me to watch the series and see Kelly's fevered, circuitous and slightly loopy storytelling unfold. He narrates the story - sung over a single instrumental bed throughout - in a combination of a past tense first-person and omniscient third-person. The main character is named "Sylvester", placing him a thinly-veiled step removed from Kelly. The series begins with a fairly straightforward recitation of events but eventually we see the invisible narrator as a separate entity from "Sylvester", stepping into the narrative and even stopping the story to insert plot points and comment on the ongoing action.

The story is structured as an episodic cliffhanger. Each segment is the length of a pop-song, and picks up right where the previous episode's cliffhanger leaves off. The result - complete with the constant reiteration of established information and the implacable narrative momentum - bears not so much a resemblance to the traditional soap-opera as the superhero comic book.

The narrative arc throughout Trapped in the Closet is, like most ongoing superhero stories, open-ended. Episode twelve ends not with any closure but another cliffhanger, and the promise of an indefinite number of future episodes. Every new chapter opens up further information in such a way that it becomes possible to catch glimpses of a larger meta-story outside of the actual character's view - a vague conspiracy featuring ties to organized crime and the police department - but only when the meta-story crosses-over with the personal soap-opera adventure that provides the main source of momentum. In this way Kelly is using the dynamic of a domestic farce - albeit as wacky and exaggerated a farce as can be imagined - to open up connections to a broader, more cosmic storyline just outside the perception of any one individual participant.

Meanwhile, the soap-opera itself touches upon a number of tertiary issues unrelated to either the main plot or the subplot - opening up subtextual tangents on issues such as gay life in the black community, religious hypocrisy, interracial marriage, the relationship between law enforcement and the black community, and even the stereotypical media portrayal of young black men as violent ex-cons. (Don't ask me to explain the midget.) I seriously doubt that any of these issues will be accorded full thematic closure by the end of the series. But just including these hot-button issues in the scope of the narrative - and certainly Kelly knows full well these are hot-buttons - opens up the scope of the story to another level of cultural commentary.

The hottest thing going right now in terms of blogosphere-wide criticism and discussion is Grant Morrison's ongoing Seven Soldiers of Victory project. I've noted on a number of occasions that after buying the first few issues I gave up on the story - not out of any dissatisfaction with the quality thereof, but more a general sense of disinterest with the subject matter, as well as the personal disappointment that Morrison is still doing superheroes. (I admit this is a highly subjective and arbitrary opinion - he's not my personal slave, he has every right to do what he wants with his talent, just as I have every right to be disinterested when he continues to toil in the superhero mines.) I imagine I'll probably catch Seven Soldiers one of these days, after the hype had died down, and when that happens I'll probably even enjoy it.

But anyone who is actively following Seven Soldiers, and especially those participating in the ongoing discussion / group explication thereof, owes it to themselves to rent Trapped in the Closet. Through some strange cosmic confluence, R. Kelly has become the Grant Morrison of R&B. It's undoubtedly the sheerest of coincidences - Kelly doesn't strike me as a -ahem- closet comic fan - but Closet offers a glimpse of another artist in another hybrid genre (the music video is a hybrid of both music and video, whereas comics are hybrids of words and pictures) using a remarkably similar metatextual and postmodern storytelling palette to achieve strikingly similar means. The recurring rupture of the "fourth wall" barrier even points to the possibility of an Animal Man-esque meta-climax. Whether or not Closet is any good is another matter entirely - but it is simply too weird too ignore.

*The blogging muse is a cranky old broad who really, really likes it when people complain about All Star Batman and Robin. She's got half a dozen nasty-ass STDs and anyone who lays with her is scarred for life.

The Hurting's Weekly Out-Of-Context Mark Trail Panel

For the Week of 01/11/06

SUDDENLY, THE TRUE SCOPE OF THE PLAN COMES INTO FOCUS



(How did I know it all comes back to the raccoons?)

For the Week of 01/04/06
Year One

Decadence

A process, condition, or period of deterioration or decline, as in morals or art; decay.

Chris Butcher's recent post on the subject of skeletal superheroes and the rather transparent thanatos being practiced at the corporate level of the great mainstream superhero manufacturers has been rattling around my head for the past few days. I recently had the chance to flip through the first two issues of Marvel Zombies, and I have to say that while I think I wholeheartedly love this comic, it is also probably the most evil thing in the universe.

It only works if you have an intimate familiarity with the characters and their histories. You have to know them well enough that their personalities and character tics are subliminally familiar. That may sound like a lot, but there are very few people reading comics today who aren't gynecologically familiar with the psychic innards of Spider-Man and co. - even those who ostensibly hate superhero comics and all they represent still know too much for them to ever sleep comfortably at night (which explains the chronic self-loathing). Gary Groth could pick up Marvel Zombies and probably get every joke therein , and maybe a good chuckle as well.

But let's look at it closely for a moment: when was the last time anyone told a zombie plague story from the POV of the zombies? Marvel Zombies gets points for showing the logistic involved in a superhero-sponsored genocide, wherein a handful of people with godlike powers set about depopulating the planet in a matter of days. It comes off as funny because we know these characters so well. It's funny because Spider-Man keeps weeping over the fact that he ate Aunt May. It's funny because they've tied up the Black Panther to an operating table and are slowly devouring him piece by piece. BWA-HA-HA-HA!!!

It's fairly obvious that the mainstream superhero books are "through the looking glass" in terms of their relationship with their audience. Gone is the brief flirtation with mainstream tastemakers. Here to stay is the realization that in terms of the direct market and superheroes, the Big Two are actually doing quite well selling their product to almost the definition of a captive audience. (Excuse me if I'm going over some of the same territory that was covered in the recent OH MY GOD MOMMY AND DADDY WON'T STOP YELLING saga.) They've essentially conditioned the market so well that it doesn't blink when they release a comic that involves Spider-Man and the Hulk eating millions of people. That is an awesome, perhaps unprecedented achievement in the history of marketing.

I think it's great, really. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," or so the song goes . . . the Big Two don't have anything to lose because the audience they have now is basically going to be with them until they die. They can put out whatever kind of bizarro shit they feel like. At the very least, we'll get to experience the sheer joy of bat-shit crazy comics such as Marvel Zombies.

But I will say that after I've seen zombie Bruce Banner's shrunken stomach explode because the Hulk ate Magneto's foot, they've really got no excuse for not publishing Peter Bagge's Hulk book.

Man of Steel

Just because I find Superman to be - as a rule - a spectacularly uninteresting character, it does not follow that I haven't read a few Superman stories. I've read many, in fact, probably more than I'd readily admit.

My favorite Superman is the Superman of 1986, the Superman we first met in John Byrne's Man of Steel miniseries. Of course, for many purists and even some casual fans, the post-Crisis Superman was heresy. There were so many changes - many of which were conceded as necessary but a few of which were ill-advised - that it was inevitable there would be a backlash. Sure enough, despite the "new" Superman's utility, the "old guard" mentality has spent the last twenty years restoring Superman to what he was before the Crisis. I refer to the "old guard" as less an actual conglomeration of individuals and more a pernicious mindset spread across dozens of creators and editors and thousands of fans. For people who grew up with the Golden or Silver or Bronze Age Superman, the new guy, even if not appreciably different from the old guy, must have been a bitter pill to swallow. People have odd sentimental attachments to these colorful super-characters - I'll be the first to admit it. Superman in particular exerts an impossibly strong grip on the imaginations of those who are so inclined.

(Of course it goes without saying that if you don't have any attachment to a particular character you can be fairly cold-blooded. Anyone who reads this blog should recall my crusade against Batman and my recurring favorable references to Quasar and the New Universe. I am the last person to cast aspersions on another man's peculiar tastes.)

I didn't grow up with the Man of Steel Superman, but he's my favorite. Certainly, Byrne and his cohorts made a few missteps in their methodical reconstruction of the mythos. Before the Crisis, Braniac was probably the most visually impressive and menacing villain in the Superman mythos - he's never really recovered from his unsuccessful "revamp". Similarly, Mr. Mxyzptlk was turned into a cackling sadist - but he was eventually rehabilitated, thanks primarily to Louise Simonson and John Bogdanove, who utilized the character to excellent effect during their tenure on Man of Steel.

But for the most part, the changes were good and they made for marked improvements. Yeah, the whole Superboy thing took the sails out of the Legion of Super Heroes, necessitating years' worth of complicated stories dedicated simply to explaining how pre-Crisis continuity could be maintained in a post-Crisis world. Even Byrne has - I believe, although I may be mistaken - voiced some regret over the deletion of Superboy from the mythos. Well, I think that Superboy was a stupid idea to begin with, and the stories were better off without him.

It's a commonly accepted fact that the pre-Crisis Superman was an asshole. There are entire websites devoted simply to explaining this fact. So many of Superman's adventures for so many years basically revolved around him tricking his friends, the world or both that it's hard not to see him as something of a sadist on occasion. But part of this disconnect, I believe, evolved from the way the character evolved. The pre-Crisis Superman, as had been established over the course of many years, knew his Kryptonian origins from the very beginning, remembered his childhood on Krypton, and identified himself as an alien living amongst humans. So of course it goes without saying that he regarded the humans around him with some degree of disconnect. Empathy was a strong motivator for Superman, but so was condescension - put the two together and you've got a pretty obnoxious combination. Although I am certain the creators at the time didn't put a lot of thought into these motivations, it came to seem as if he was something of an boor. No fucking wonder Lex Luthor wanted to wipe that smug look of his face - you probably would too.

Post-Crisis, Superman became much more identifiably human, and I think the development made for a stronger character. The fact that Superman regards himself as a human who just happened to inherit an intergalactic legacy, as opposed to an omnipotent alien who pretends to be human for shits and giggles, makes for a far more interesting character - certainly, it goes a long way towards injecting pathos into an otherwise stolid figure. The fact that he didn't grow up Super but came into his powers later in life added to the appeal by ensuring that he had a firm recognition of human weakness and limitations - so, no Superboy. Sure enough, almost every Superman story adapted into other media since 1986 -- the cartoon, the Lois & Clark series, even Smallville (although I haven't seen enough of the latter to comment) -- has implemented many of the ideas first seen in Byrne's revamp, in particular the newer "human-perspective" outlook. The famous comment about there being two Supermen - the licensed, publicly-known Superman and the actual character in the books - has proven to be surprisingly inaccurate when examining the character's life in other media.

But again, the old ideas are slowly returning, regardless of whether or not they should. The idea of Luthor and Clark Kent being friends in Smallville is one of the stupidest ideas in comics history, and I the fact that it's been folded back into continuity is just silly. Reed Richards and Dr. Doom have a reason for knowing each other, whereas Luthor and Kent being childhood pals is just too pat. Might as well have Bruce Wayne stop by and sit a spell while you're at it - but I'm sure they've done that, or will do that at some point.

The Superman introduced in Man of Steel was powerful but not the most powerful. The last decade has seen his powers visibly ramping-up, subtly returning to pre-Crisis levels through a process of subliminal inflation on the part of creators who don't want to portray Superman as anything less than a God-like force of nature. Used to be that Darkseid could wallop Superman with one punch - it made sense that such a badass would be more powerful than Superman - otherwise, what was the point of conflict in the first place, if Superman was stronger than even the mightiest intergalactic warlord? Now Superman makes a regular habit of beating Darkseid like a red-headed stepchild. Part of the fun of the post-Crisis Superman was that he wasn't omnipotent, but enough stories have portrayed him as powerful enough that it just doesn't matter anymore.

Now we've got kryptonite everywhere - whereas one of the smart things Byrne did was establish that kryptonite was so extremely rare you would never again see small-time hoods chucking pieces at Superman while rubbing a bank. There was the recognition that it was a powerful enough plot device that it had to be used as sparingly as possible. The multiple colors are even back, to judge from flipping through recent titles. Maybe this is an element that'll be swept under the rug with the new Crisis - I guess we'll see.

I'm not for a moment suggesting that the character should have stayed static since 1986. But for all you can say about Byrne, he did a pretty good job of building a fine framework in which a character who had pretty much been exhausted of all interest could have some fun stories again. It wasn't perfect - the Mxyzptlk and Brainiac examples spring to mind, as does the regrettable story with Superman and Big Barda filming a porno movie - but it was pretty good. And sure enough, there were people who have insisted all along that this Superman was not their Superman, and who have furthermore taken umbrage at every subsequent development. Well, I don't read any of the ongoing Superman titles, but judging from those Superman books I have read I can testify to the fact that Superman is an incredibly difficult character to write well. Byrne's ideas made it easier to tell interesting stories by defining a new set of boundaries for the character.

Boundaries are necessary. Boundaries define limitations, and if you don't give a character limitations, there are very few interesting ways to create conflict. Besides, how else do superheroes prove their heroism than by surpassing their limitations? Many of those stories from the pre-Crisis era that succeeded did so by placing Superman on an existential level removed from the actual process of physical struggle - "Superman Red and Superman Blue", "Must There Be A Superman?". But you can't turn Action Comics into Keirkegaard Comics, so you have to find a way to create conflict, which Byrne did by tweaking a few aspects of the mythos while still keeping the character's iconic elements essentially intact. By restoring so much of the pre-Crisis status quo, the current creators have gone to great lengths to restore so many of the attributes that made the pre-Crisis character so damned boring. Considering the character's history of inconsistent and wavering popularity, they return to unsuccessful modes at their own peril.