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Friday, June 14, 2002 ( 6/14/2002 10:39:00 AM ) Bill S. A LOAN AGAIN, NATURALLY – Driving back from the park, dogs in the back seat, I noticed a new business had opened four blocks from my home. Nestled between the signs for First Wok and Crosscutters was a banner for “Payday Loans.” I’ve been noticing more and more of these businesses opening across the state in the last few years: pre-payday loan shops/car title loan shops (for some reason, many of those seem to light in abandoned Dairy Queens). I live in the second richest county in Illinois (behind Cook, of course), yet even here the loan sharks have been proliferating at a rate that seems astounding to me. The number of pawnshops in my area has similarly grown. These growth industries appear to have predated the current recession (remember seeing my first transmogrified Dairy Queen during the Clinton admin), though it’s likely that our current economic woes have exacerbated things. My comprehension of econ theory is admittedly piss-poor, but intuitively this does not feel good to me. What it tells me is that the number of Americans who are having difficulty living paycheck to paycheck is increasing: a hidden side effect of welfare reform (perhaps I should ask Mickey Kaus?), sign that our personal ability to budget is diminishing, or perhaps just a basic reflection of the fact that a dollar doesn’t take us as far as it used to? Beats me – but it’s still bothersome. # | Thursday, June 13, 2002 ( 6/13/2002 07:01:00 AM ) Bill S. WHO SAID MODERN LIFE WAS ANY EASIER? – The Comics Journal message board has a thread on William Messner-Loebs, a talented writer-artist who for a time scripted both Flash and Wonder Woman – and also developed an even better comic book series about a Midwestern American frontiersman (Journey). Apparently, Loebs has suffered some serious financial misfortune and is on the verge of eviction from his house. He’s soliciting aid from the comics community. UPDATE: Since word of Loebs' difficulties has been broadcast on the TCJ Comics News message board, fan response has spurred the site's administrators to initiate Bill 'n Nadine's Online Rent Party, a board designed to garner PayPal donations and other financial help. # | ( 6/13/2002 06:19:00 AM ) Bill S. “HEY MAN! YOUR NAME ISN’T STAN, IS IT?” – Been playing the new Pet Shop Boys’ release, a.k.a. Release, and while I’ve enjoyed the guys’ usual melodic smarts, I wasn’t finding anything on the new disc that made me really stand up and take notice. This week, however, I read in Christgau that one of the songs, “The Night I Fell In Love,” is a put-down on Eminem-styled homophobia. With the boys, it usually takes several weeks before their lyrics kick in: opulent sonics is everything. (The days when I’d lie on my back, parsing the inner sleeves of record albums, are long in the past.) So I pull out the CD booklet and read the song’s words: an arch and witty reconstruction of an imaginary overnight stand between a big-name rap star and his young boy fan. ("When I asked/why I heard so much/about him being charged/with homophobia and stuff/he just shrugged.") Pretty funny, I think – and for the first time the lyrics are the break-out component in a PSB stand-up track. Don't know if that's a good or bad thing in the long haul. But in this moment, at least, it's made a Pet Shop Boys' track worth thinking about. # | Wednesday, June 12, 2002 ( 6/12/2002 08:40:00 PM ) Bill S. RUFFERTO – Read the most recent reprint of Sergio Aragones’ Groo comics this weekend: The Groo Maiden (Dark Horse), which takes from the character’s eighties run as a part of Marvel Comics Epic line. (Used to own these books in their original format, but they were sold during a major burst of personal poverty that got me selling most of my then-extant collection.) The Chakaal stories are some of my personal favorites – as much for the way that Aragones and Evanier treat Groo’s faithful dog Rufferto as anything. If Groo hadn’t picked up the worshipful Queensland Heeler in the midst of his wanderings, I know his adventures would be much the poorer. In Rufferto’s eyes, the dim barbarian can (usually) do no wrong – even if the rest of the world knows differently. He’s a plucky exemplar of the unconditional loyalty a good dog can show its human partner, and his consistent misreadings of Groo’s intentions provide scripter Evanier with fertile possibilities. In Maiden, we see a slightly different – but no less dog-like – Rufferto. Platinum-haired Chakaal is a statuesque woman warrior for hire and the object of Groo’s unrequited affections. He doggedly (sorry) follows her around, and though she can be an uncompromisingly fierce fighter, she’s unable to shoo the lovelorn lout (these days, she’d probably get a restraining order). While our barbarian hero hasn’t a chance in hell of winning Chakaal’s heart, the sight of Groo pining over her rouses great feelings of jealousy in Rufferto. What woman, the dog wonders, wouldn’t want Groo? (Those of us watching Groo unintentionally sabotage Chakaal’s attempts to protect the villages that’ve hired her know the answer to that question.) It’s a comic variation on a triangle familiar to anyone who has ever seriously dated someone with a pet. Back when my wife and I were first getting together, she had a large yellow domestic who used to attack me on the leg with claws outstretched. Fortunately, I outlived him. Fortunately for Rufferto, the mismatched couple is split apart by collection’s end. (Chakaal believes Groo has drowned: “Odd,” she thinks as she walks off, “I do not feel as happy for that as that I had always thought I would be.”) The woman warrior’s been absent in recent years, but I think it’s time for her to make a re-appearance: if only so we can watch Rufferto squirm once more . . . # | Tuesday, June 11, 2002 ( 6/11/2002 06:32:00 AM ) Bill S. OH, BALTIMORE – Summertime, and the living is gritty. Hooked up this season with HBO’s new cop series The Wire, and after two eps, I’m in it for the duration. Set in West Baltimore (hey, howcum I don’t see Barry Levinson or John Waters’ name anywhere in the credits?), the series follows a hastily assembled crew of cops set to bust an inner city drug kingpin. Despairingly honest about the war on drugs (which, one cop complains in the premiere ep, has been supplanted by the War on Terrorism), the show centers around a homicide detective McNulty (Dominic West) who has managed to piss off both superiors and peers by talking to a gung-ho judge about the city drug scene. Because the judge has raised a political stink that city leaders wish to contain, a token interdepartmental team has been assembled to conduct an investigation. That each member of the team has a different vision of the parameters of this task is only one of the problems facing our crew. The series juggles the mechanics of the developing investigation with scenes depicting the politics of a big city bureaucracy – plus down-and-dirty looks at the sellers & customers in Baltimore’s projects. Some moments are as familiar as any we’ve seen on mainstream cop shows (McNulty’s suspect interrogation in ep two wouldn't be out of place on N.Y.P.D. Blue), while some have the hardnosed urban currency of more extremist fare like FX’s The Shield (e.g., a sequence where a trio of drunken drug cops visits the projects to engage in some casual “investigatory” brutality). Of course, because it’s HBO, the language and violence are more adult. The series’ large ensemble cast is largely unfamiliar to me, but it hasn’t taken long for them to establish their characters (worth singling out: Sonja Sohn’s hardnosed narcotics cop). Between this and FX’s stellar L.A.-based cop series, Big Net police procedurals are looking increasingly more archaic and out-of-touch. ADDENDUM: Can’t help but be amused that Lileks, who didn’t mind the lazy writing & character-free ciphers in Attack of the Clones, goes off on a rant after watching an ep of The Wire. Nonono, he’s not upset over the fact that Sohn’s character is a lesbian; here’s how he two-steps into an attack: “I bristle when a show expects I’ll ascribe salutary characteristics to someone because of their sexuality.” Reads like anticipatory arguing to me, since as far as I can tell, the show has made no such connection in either of its first two eps. But you knew every time there’s a gay character on television it’s an automatic statement, right?) “If you think I’m overstating the case,” Lileks adds, “one of the dumb cops, who’s worked with the Smart Grim Lesbian for years, apparently, asks her in the middle of a stake-out when she decided she doesn’t like men.” This, he notes, is firmly establish that she’s “A LESBIAN IN A SEXIST POLICE DEPARTMENT.” Only two problems with this example.
So the point of the scene is not, as Lileks imagines, to portray our heroine tilting against an insensitive gay-bashing establishment – just to show that she’s got a dolt on her team, a point that’s nailed by this same character’s participation in the disastrous drunken projects foray. If Wire creator David Simon gave me a scene on the show next week that tried to make one of Lileks’ anticipated arguments, I probably wouldn’t fall off the couch in shock. But for our favorite Bleater to act like the point has already been made is to watch one man let his personal cultural agenda overwhelm his considerable critical faculties. . . # | ( 6/11/2002 04:24:00 AM ) Bill S. POKER NATION REVISITED – This month’s Unitarian men’s poker night was a near wash for me. Starting with a stake of $8.00, I ended the evening $.35 poorer. (Would’ve done worse but the last hand was a round of Showdown that I won for $5.00.) Ah, but one plays poker for the camaraderie, not the money, right? # | Monday, June 10, 2002 ( 6/10/2002 08:49:00 AM ) Bill S. HEEDING THE CALL-UP – Reading the first issue of Marvel’s Call of Duty mini-series, I couldn’t help recalling a statement Mark Evanier made last September: I fear we're in for a tasteless spate of movies, TV shows and even comic books that fictionalize the events in and around the World Trade Center disaster, all seeking to make coin or poach on the emotions but hiding behind the moral cover of "tribute." Even though some of the authors may have the best of intentions, I wonder if the greatest tribute is not to leave the whole, tragic event in its grim reality. It will be especially easy for super-hero comic books to make this mistake. For years, disasters of this sort (or worse) have occurred or been prevented about five times a week in the nation's funnybooks. The whole notions of cataclysm and heroism, as they relate to the world in which you and I reside, are wildly out of skew in a mythos where whole universes get eradicated and thousands of people can fly and tear down brick walls. Comics can pay Lip Service to the victims or, more likely, the "real super-heroes," (i.e., rescue workers) and that may impress those who cream when their super-hero comics connect at all with Real Life. But I'll bet most of it will be morally indistinguishable from jacking up the prices on American flags these days. Written by Chuck Austen and illustrated by David Finch in that dark, grittily “realistic” style favored by more noirish superheroes these days, Call of Duty: The Brotherhood is the first of a set of limited series books dealing with “real-life” heroes in the Marvel Universe. Lead of The Brotherhood is James MacDonald, a NYC fireman who is the first of several city workers who sees a mysterious young girl in the middle of a disaster (second is an EMT who sees the same little girl in a car wreck). This young Cassandra appears to MacDonald in the midst of a raging apartment fire: she warns of an unspecific impending catastrophe in which “many will die,” then disappears. Scanning the book for the first time, my initial suspicion was that our hero was being warned of the World Trade Center attack, but later in the tale, we’re told that events are post-9-11. First part of The Brotherhood has been previewed in snippets over the last month in the back pages of Marvel’s regular titles, so it’s clear the company is giving its series the big build-up. (Even read a short wire news blurb about the series in my local paper.) The premiere reads like a comic version of the Ron Howard fireman flick, Backdraft – same blend of work-related action & detail coupled with soapish characterization: nothing too startling but nothing too offensive either. There are two other titles in the series set to premiere this summer: The Precinct, which focuses on the NYPD, and The Wagon, which looks more closely at ambulance drivers. Though the presence of a seemingly supernatural prophetess cues us that we’re not exactly reading a docu-comic, it’s unclear how writer Austen is gonna connect this all into the Marvel Universe without falling into the traps that Evanier describes above. Perhaps it's too soon to draw any conclusions, but I'm bettin' scripter Austen has his work cut out for him. Some of Marvel's other attempts at blending "realism" with the superhero universe have been spottily successful at best (think: Marvels). I’m also guessing that Mark's pretty much feeling like a prophet himself these days. # | |
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