[I'll be reprinting the newsletter I sent out for 60 weeks over 2018. I think it went a bit longer than that but I'll be stopping at Issue #60 for reasons that will be apparent when we get there. Being the carefree lover of anarchy and staunch destroyer of the status quo that I am, I did not date them. They were weekly and I know I began in December 2017, so I'll just approximate the dates. I'm pretty sure they were never late!]
E!TACT! #1
The Demon, Deadman, Black Lightning, and Other Assorted Bullshit
By Grunion Guy
The Demon: Hell is Earth #1 by Constant, Walker, Hennessy, and Sotomayor
This week, I read that comic I just mentioned above. It was better than I expected it to be and not as good as it probably should have been. I should make a note of that comment because it describes most of my comic book reading experience since I became an adult (probably at about thirty six? (that's hyperbole. I need to point that out because I need you to understand that it was more like seventeen, give or take twenty years)). Before that time, comic books were magical in a way that things were magical before I finally had sex and it turned out to be no better than anything else in life. I mean, sure, it's pretty fun and the ending is terrific (if you count the ending as the moment you yourself orgasm. If you count the ending as any time after that, things can get pretty miserable and awkward) but the pleasure is terribly fleeting (just like life! So it's a reminder of dying which is why I understand people who commit suicide because I can't stop jerking off). In the face of an eternity of non-existence, it's tough to justify any action at all that's meant to pass the time in a pleasurable fashion. I mean, if I'm working on anything other than a magic potion that will give me immortality, is what I'm doing worth anything at all? Even Shakespeare would probably trade every single line he wrote for actual immortality instead of the stupid literary kind where you're not really alive to experience it.
So The Demon was good enough for fans of The Demon which is also to say it wasn't good enough for fans of The Demon. You know what I mean? You probably know what I mean. I want so much more but I'll take the fucking scraps if that's all that's being served. But there's one moment in particular that I'd like to discuss: Madame Xanadu's encounter with the patriarchy.
If you've been a loyal cult follower of my work (and why haven't you been if you haven't been? What's wrong with you?), you might remember when I began calling Madame Xanadu a "barn owl." If you don't remember, let me remind you.
I don't like Madame Xanadu because it's fun not to like her. Since this is a secret Newsletter, I feel like I can reveal some of my writing secrets after all these years! One of those secrets is that I don't really feel any of the passionate feelings I'm pretending to feel as I write about comic books (although when I say something touched me and made me cry, I mean it (I mean, not really because, what? You think I cry? Pshaw!)). If some thing or idea makes me laugh, I stick with it and drive it so far into the ground that it becomes a metaphor or analogy that I don't feel like thinking up. That's what happened with Madame Xanadu. I realized that her main power was to see threats from the future and recruit people to stop those threats. But once the people stopped the so-called threat, the threat never came about. So was it actually real or was Madame Xanadu just manipulating people to do her bidding? The only way to know for sure is to ignore her once and then see if disaster befalls the world. But nobody has the guts to do that so she just keeps tricking people into doing her work for her. Because of this, I began calling her a cunt.
Now, calling a woman a cunt on the Internet, even if she's a fictional woman and I'm obviously being facetious in my tone (okay, maybe it's not so obvious to assholes and cunts but I still think if you're smart, you'll realize it (that's a great argument for me to take because I can just chalk up any anger at me as coming from dumb people who I now don't need to acknowledge because they're so dumb!)), can be a dangerous thing. So before anybody really called me out on it, I began calling her a barn owl. I made sure to explain that I was replacing the word cunt with the phrase barn owl so as not to confuse my loyal cult following. I mean the people who casually read my blog (now a newsletter) for fun (instead of working on that fucking immortality potion. Should I maybe stop distracting people?! What if one of my loyal readers never creates the potion because they're reading my rants about how Scott Lobdell can't tell the difference between a piece of good writing and his own writing?). Anyway, the important part wasn't the word so I dispensed with the word. The important part was that the people reading my new signifier understood exactly what it signified.
Which brings us back to this issue of The Demon where Madame Xanadu is called a cow by angry men whom she has just rebuffed. Is it a coincidence that Andrew Constant replaces the word we know the guy would have used for a barnyard animal? You know, like a barn owl? Um, I mean, okay, so a barn owl isn't technically a barnyard animal. But it has the word barn in its name which means it must live in a barn and thus is a barnyardish animal.
I hope it wasn't called a barn owl because instead of saying "Who?" it says "Cunt!" I mean "Barn!"
Some people might dismiss the idea that those men, if they were in an adult book, would have called them cunts. But I feel like Andrew is from overseas. Initially I thought from the UK but it looks like maybe Australia? Or maybe he's just American the way I'm American in that I prefer UK entertainment to American watered down for the stupid and prudish masses bullshit. Plus calling Madame Xanadu a cow lets Madame Xanadu turn the men into cows later. What would she have fittingly turned them into if they'd called her a cunt? And would I have recognized what they were?
I'm not suggesting Andrew Constant is a cult follower of mine and chose to follow my direction on signifiers and signified. It seems an obvious choice, to me, to replace cunt with an evocation of the rural. Anyway, it seems apparent to me that we're meant to read cow as cunt. If none of what I've written has won you over, maybe the panel immediately after the cow comment will bring you to my side.
Deadman #2 by Neal Adams
The first issue of this series was nigh incomprehensible. That didn't stop some terrible comic book reviewers from declaring it the master work it absolutely wasn't. When I purchased the first issue, my local comic shop owner rang me up at the register. I mentioned how I was only purchasing Deadman because I liked the character but I wasn't excited about Neal Adams' modern work. She looked up at me, made a face, and said, "I know." Then we made sure to each say some conciliatory things about how his terrible writing doesn't erase the impact he had on comics forty years ago (even though I was only saying it to sound like a proper comic book fan and not because I actually meant it. I have no idea if I ever read anything from Adams when I was younger) before we both went back to trashing The Coming of the Supermen.
Neal Adams is currently 76 years old. I discovered this here-to-fore unknown fact by typing "Neal Adams" into Google. It doesn't give his height and weight though because Google can't know everything, no matter how many spy cameras it installs in your phone. I mention his age not as a proof as to why his writing is currently so terrible. It could be, of course. You can't rule out anything when you're using science. Or should my conclusion be the opposite of that? Also, is the opposite of that "You can rule out some things when you're using science" or "You can't rule out anything when you're using faith"? Anyway, I mention it as a way to say I fell into a Google Rabbit Hole that deposited me on Neal Adams' Twitter account and how his being 76 definitely explains that. It's like an old man yelling from his porch for the Republican neighbor kids to go fuck themselves. It's hauntingly entertaining.
Look, I don't know why I used the adjective "hauntingly" there. Some things in life will just have to remain a mystery, no matter how much shit can be found on Google and Wikipedia.
Before I mention the writing (which will probably just be a full paragraph of me saying, "Wait. What? What just...hunh? Did that...how come...am I reading this correctly?" Normally I don't speak in stilted sentences like that but Neal Adams' writing has overcome my mind), let me just say the art is fantastic in that "this is what comic books looked like forty years ago" kind of way. That isn't any kind of subtle critique on it looking old fashioned. Have you read the way I feel about the work of some of the top artists working at DC? It's just a fact that Neal draws the comics the way Neal remembers comics being drawn. And I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying the art seeing as how The Coming of the Supermen looked like an amateur artist too worried about his cock stuck in the bathtub spigot to worry about how his pages were turning out.
After Deadman learns that Batman somehow put the soul of The Sensei into a baby, The Phantom Stranger appears to give Deadman the worst advice in the world: obsess over your past mistakes. I think. It's a bit hard to interpret what he says. Does history tell us what The Phantom Stranger tells us history tells us? I'm not sure I'm convinced. Although if The Phantom Stranger appeared before me and told me that to my face, I'd probably be all, "Right?! Right?! You're so fucking cool. And sexy. Can you finger my butthole?" To be fair, that's how I greet everybody.
Never mind most of that previous paragraph. Especially the last line. The thing I should concentrate on is this: "It's a bit hard to interpret." As I mentioned before, the first issue was incomprehensible. This issue doubles down on the incomprehensible bit making it super incomprehensible. If I'm being charitable, I'd say the focus of both stories is Deadman's need to get revenge on the hook handed guy who killed him so that he can rest in peace. But last issue, didn't we see a flashback of the hook handed man being killed by The Sensei? Which is why Deadman was after The Sensei. But when he realized killing The Sensei's soul would kill an innocent baby, he went back to looking for the hook handed man. Who I thought was dead. But I can't be sure because I'll be damned if I allowed any of the first issue to remain in my memory.
While this issue didn't explain why Commissioner Gordon was investigating a nuclear plant in Tokyo, it doesn't explain why The Phantom Stranger gets Deadman to kill an unnamed assassin without a hook for a hand. That sentence might sound confusing but I think it's grammatically correct. I couldn't say "While Issue #1 didn't explain something, Issue #2 did explain something" because Issue #2 was just more confusing bullshit. At least it brings in The Spectre and Etrigan at the end to not clear things up at all. For some reason, The Spectre, who is God's Justice in human form, doesn't think the assassin getting eaten by a lion is just. But at least he gives a reason for appearing. Etrigan just shows up because it's probably in his contract that if more than three mystic DC characters appear in a book, he also gets to appear.
I suppose there could be something going on in this story that makes sense. But I'll be damned if I know what it is and I'm a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader (all that means is I've probably wasted ten thousand hours of my life reading comic books). If I had to guess, I'd say Boston Brand never actually died. He's in a coma and his spirit is trapped in some kind of Hell created by The Sensei. In that alternate world, Commissioner Gordon's big hobby is inspecting Japanese nuclear plants, Batman enjoys stuffing evil souls into babies, and mystic DC characters are allowed to visit. By Issue #6, Neal Adams will introduce a new character into the DCU: Comaman!
Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands #2 by Isabella, Henry, and Pantazis
Isabella decides the best way for readers to understand the theme is to remind them of The Twilight Zone episode, "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street." Without that reminder, the comic book would be just as average as it is with the reminder. I mean, it's pretty obvious stuff. I only have two major complaints. First is that the play the kids choose to do for the winter pageant (the one that's a wink and a nod and an elbow poke to The Twilight Zone episode) seems to only have one part: the narrator. The second is that the kids have pizza, milk, and French fries for lunch. So fucking gross.
Which one is the fruit? The pizza or the fries? OR THE MILK?!?!
Other Assorted Bullshit
I'm experimenting with this whole newsletter thing. I don't really want to make it just a bunch of my usual reviews strung together and delivered by email. It'll probably wind up being short bits about specific moments or themes in the comics I read each week. And maybe I'll add some other crap in this section, like essays, poems, games, short stories, or terribly shocking pictures I've drawn. I'll definitely be answering any replies anybody makes, at least until I have so many people asking me stupid questions that they overwhelm my senses and I walk into the ocean, never to return.
I also haven't determined a regular day to send out the newsletter. Maybe Tuesday at the end of the comic book week? Or maybe Wednesday since Tuesday is my I don't have to run day.
Anyway, I'll try to be just as tone deaf to how a normal, kind, benevolent person should be as I've ever been. But it'll be okay to laugh at this stuff here because we share a secret: I'm actually a really kind and generous person. Well, maybe not generous. But probably kind! Anyway, I'm totally kissable, so that should square everything.
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